Windows Password recovery

[enaberif]

Originally Posted by JD

And really, I think using a Live CD of Linux is far more effective. XP was never designed to run live and it's performance is lackluster.

If you need a live Windows environment, all I'd use would be Windows PE 3.0/3.1. With a bit of effort, you could add in a bunch of portable apps to it for troubleshooting purposes. And at least WinPE is free and legal from MS.

The Windows XP that comes with Hiren works awesome. Its not meant to be a full fledged OS and I've used it MANY MANY times to do things like recover or change passwords.

Hiren 14.0 is a cd I keep in my tech book for use and its almost always out.

[ipaine]

I use Hirens all the time. More specifically I just cleared a password on an old box that did not have the right admin accounts set up. The tool I use is the Offline NT Password Changer. It works every time without fail on XP, Vista and 7. Not once has it failed to clear the password and let me back in.