Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP , Windows VISTA, Windows 7 users who have forgotten the administrator account password has many ways to hack, crack, recover or reset the administrator password. Another way to break into a Windows PC which locks with forgotten or unknown password is to use chntpw, a Linux based program to change and reset the password of a Windows administrator account.
Chntpw is a program designed to overwrite and set Windows NT or Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows VISTA, Windows 7 SAM password of any user that has a valid (local) account by modifying the encrypted password in the registry’s SAM file. User of chntpw does not need to know the old password to set a new password.
Actually, chntpw is now available in the form of bootdisk or LiveCD which includes necessary stuff to access NTFS partitions and scripts to glue the whole thing together.
Chntpw works on NT system which is offline (turned off), and can only be used on local machine and cannot be used on a remote machine. However, chntpw can be installed on a Linux system such as Ubuntu, and then used to recover by resetting Windows user account password by mounting the Windows drive, connected via physical IDE/SATA/SCSI interface or USB portable disk.
Chntpw can be installed using aptitude for user using Debian based system,
It is pretty easy to use and can be found and installed using aptitude if your using debian based system, or can be downloaded and installed in Ubuntu with a simple command :
sudo apt-get install chntpw
Chntpw Usage Guide
1. Mount the Windows NTFS, FAT or FAT32 partition to the Linux system, allowing read and write access support.
2. Locate the SAM file for Windows 2000, Windows NT, Windows XP, Windows VISTA or Windows 7 which is normally located at the either \Windows\System32\config or \Winnt\System32\config folder. Change directory to inside the folder, there are a number of files such as SAM, SYSTEM and SECURITY.
Inside the folder, issue the following command to automatically change the administrator password:
chntpw SAM
Issue the following command (replace USERNAME with actual user name on the computer) to change the password for a normal restricted user account:
chntpw -u USERNAME SAM
Tip: To list all the users in the SAM file, use the
chntpw -l SAM command.
3. Chntpw will display some information on screen, and then prompt for new password to reset the existing password. Enter a new password for the administrator or user account.
Tip: To reset the password to blank (no) password, enter * (asterisk).
4. Unmount the drive, and then restart the Windows computer. The password for the administrator or user account reseted should be changed accordingly.
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**ANOTHER SIMPLE METHOD**
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For this method, you must have :
1) Pen Drive (1GB or more)
PASSWORD : qq
What we are doing here?
First we need to install Ubuntu 9.10 to the USB drive.. Open Unetbootin.
- In "Distribution", select 'Ubuntu' & '9.10 _Live'
- Select the type as USB drive.
- Select the drive where the usb drive is displayed. Click OK.
When it is done, click on “exit” and remove the USB drive. You now have the live image of Ubuntu 9.10
Now you are ready for HACK Administrator Password of Microsoft Windows (NT, 2000, 2003, XP, VISTA, 7)
Insert the Usb drive into the target computer. Start the computer, Boot from the usb drive. (FIRST CHECK BOOT PRIORITY DISK FROM BIOS n ENSURE THAT FIRST BOOT PRIORITY IS USB/PENDRIVE/THUMBDRIVE)When you boot from the USB drive , the unetbootin options comes and you have to select “default” . Thus it boots Ubuntu.
Now you have access to the windows filesystem. Now we need chntpw. To get it, connect to the internet and run the command :
sudo software-properties-gtk --enable-component=universe --enable-component=multiverse; sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get install chntpw
Go to the terminal and change the directory to the password file
cd /media/path/to/disk/WINDOWS/system32/config/
Now run the chntpw tool
sudo chntpw -u username SAM SYSTEM
Now the Password of windows is removed n you could restart n log into the windows.
Wednesday, June 02, 2010
Anu
With all the good intentions you can think of, name it a tutorial purpose or something to learn purely for the fun and never to harm anyone, I will now show you a simple way to hack a Windows administrator password using Linux. You will only need a Live CD, and for this example, we will utilize Ubuntu. 
