1998-03-24: Please note: Due to change of webservers soon, please access
this page through: http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/index.html and
not the old with login.eunet.no etc..

Forgot your NT admin password?

Reinstall? Oh no.. But not any more..

The Offline Utility to Change NT Passwords

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Overview

   * This is a small utility to (re)set the password of any user that has a
     valid (local) account on your NT system, by modifying the crypted
     password in the registrys SAM file.
   * You do not need to know the old password to set a new one.
   * It works offline, that is, you have to shutdown your computer and boot
     off a floppydisk. The bootdisk includes stuff to access NTFS
     partitions and scripts to glue the whole thing together.
   * Note: It will not work on systems encrypted with SP3's syskey.

Why?

NT stores it's user information including crypted versions of the passwords
in a file called 'sam', usually found in \winnt\system32\config. This file
is a part of the registry, and thus in a somewhat undocumented binary
format. As far as I know, Microsoft provides no way of changing this if you
cannot log in as someone with appropriate privileges, except restoring the
registry files from the rescuefloppy.

   * You don't forget passwords?
   * You never get boxes to admin when someone quits suddenly?
   * Your vendor delivers a preconfigured system to you, but never have
     "freak" accidents and lose the password they've set on it?
   * If so, what are you doing reading this?? Go read propaganda from your
     favourite software vendor instead.

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DISCLAIMER:

THIS SOFTWARE COMES WITH NO WARRANTY WHATSOEVER. THE AUTHOR IS NOT
RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DAMAGE CAUSED BY THE (MIS)USE OF THIS SOFTWARE!
It's VERY ALPHA yet, and relies heavily on undocumented structures and
methods. You have been warned!
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How to get it?

No problem.. It's right here, and free!

Look here for more info on:

   * Bootdisk: Instructions & image to download. Last update: 980211
   * Precompiled binary & source archive. Last update: 970611

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980211, pnordahl@eunet.no