Resetting XP Admin Password

I have just bought a laptop (Dell) with XP on it.

It has various users on it and I can get in okay - but I cant get into the admin as I dont know the password.

The previous owners say they don't know as after they set it up they set up users and have not had need for admin password.

Any ideas?????

There are many ways of obtaining the administrator password

I am not sure if this question is allowed to be asked here.

if its not we well know soon.

if its allowed u will got some answer soon as well.

Not sure why it can't be asked? Windows password is hardly a major security issue and if it comes to the push I will just have to reinstall from scratch.

Obviously I would rather avoid this as it already has programs on it that I would have liked to have kept.

ADDED - Of course if there is any problems with publishing this then I can always be contacted via PM or email etc etc!!

Other than 3rd party applications, back up your files and get ready to start from scratch. The locksmith utility in ERD Commander will do it for you. $150 US:

http://www.winternals.com/products/repa ... sp?pid=erd

MS has help files on this subject. You will invalidate all your keys... which means encrypted files and folders will be lost, and security policies may still prevent you from doing so (unlikely).

To be honest I am not worried about loosing files as I didn't create them I wont miss them. It will save me going around clearing out the trash anyway.

I did try the help but could not find anything other than using the Admin to change users etc. I will have a look on the MS site.

[quote="ATNO/TW"]Other than 3rd party applications, back up your files and get ready to start from scratch. The locksmith utility in ERD Commander will do it for you. $150 US/quote]

ERD Commander is a wonderful tool, it did help me allot with many of my problems.


$150 is the cost but i think its worthed, but the problem is $$

You are not wrong!!! I would have it for free but if it is going to cost I will just have to reinstall!! Sure I will live!

since u can have it for free, so why don't u use it to reset ur admin password

So you don't have admin password. Ok, just delete SAM file and password will be forgotten. If your file system is FAT32, boot from win98 system disk and delete SAM file (del C:\Windows\System32\config\sam).
If you have NTFS you can use " NTFSpro" or any such type program to create startup disk which can read NTFS partitions.

Sorry - you misunderstood me (or I did not explain clear enough more likely). If it was free I would use it - but at cost it is hardly justified. It would be nice to keep some of the programs if I can but as nothing on it is mine it is not the end of the world to start again.

On a similar note - I notice when I booted up and get past the BIOS password (which I do know) it gives me 2 options of what to load up with. Both look the same but give different users depending on which one I choose. The first option has and Administrator login option but the second option doesn't.

Does this mean that there are two installations of XP? If so I suppose it could be possible that the second one (the one without the admin account @ logon) may not have had its password added so I could simply use ctrl+alt+del (x2) and manually type in Administrator. (I have not tried yet - battery is dead and it keeps shutting down on me - need to leave it a while)

Why would any PC's have two versions on it? Is this normal? As you may guess I am not familiar with XP at all. I have always found it to be slow on pc's that I have seen using it.

There are probably two installations, (based on your description) It's not normal, but it can happen depending on how the newer one was installed. You can verify this if you have two drive letters (probably C: and D:) with OS files. By default, XP install is going to require an admin password, but if I recall correctly there is an install option to "assume" that this user (i.e. admin) is the one that logs in all the time and therefore that selection may give you administrative rights.