Offline NT Password & Registry Editor, Bootdisk / CD

I've put together a single floppy or CD which contains things needed to edit
the passwords on most systems. The CD can also be installed on a USB drive, see
readme.txt on the CD.

The bootdisk should support most of the more usual disk controllers, and it
should auto-load most of them. Both PS/2 and USB keyboard supported.

Tested on: NT 3.51, NT 4 (all versions and SPs), Windows 2000 (all versions
& SPs), Windows XP (all versions, also SP2 and SP3), Windows Server 2003
(all SPs), Vindows Vista 32 and 64 bit, and some say it works on Server 2008 (32
& 64 bit)

DANGER WILL ROBINSON!
If used on users that have EFS encrypted
files, and the system is XP or Vista, all encrypted files for that user will be
UNREADABLE! and cannot be recovered unless you remember the old password
again If you don't know if you have encrypted files or not, you
most likely don't have them. (except maybe on corporate systems)

Please see the Frequently Asked Questions and the
version history below before emailing questions to me. Thanks!

How to use?

Please read the walthrough and the FAQ before
mailing me questions

If you have the CD, all drivers are included.
If you use the floppy, you
need one or more of the driver floppies, too.

Overview

Get the machine to boot from CD (or floppy)
Floppy version need to swap floppy to load drivers.
Load drivers (usually automatic, but possible to run manual select)
Disk select, tell which disk contains the Windows system. Optionally you
will have to load drivers.
PATH select, where on the disk is the system?
File select, which parts of registry to load, based on what you want to do.
Password reset or other registry edit.
Write back to disk (you will be asked)

DON'T PANIC!! - Most
questions can usually be answered with the default answer which is given in
[brackets]. Just press enter/return to accept the default answer.

The walkthrough and instructions is now on its own
page!

What can go wrong?

Lots of things can go wrong, but most faults won't
damage your system.

The most critical moment is when writing back the registry files to NTFS.

The most common problem is that the computer was not cleanly shut down, and
my disk won't write correctly back. (it says: read only filesystem). If so, boot
into Windows Safe Mode (F8 before windows logo appears) and shut down from the
login window. You may have to do that twice in a row.

Also, see the FAQ for help with other common problems.

For linux-knowledged people, you may do things manually if the scripts fail,
you have shells on tty1-tty4 (ALT F1 - ALT F4).

Download

Note: Some links may be offsite.

CD release, see below on how to use

cd080802.zip (~3MB) - Bootable CD image.
(md5sum: 33ecd38263f935b82e7b2e3e9f5de563)
cd080526.zip (~3MB) - Previous release, Bootable
CD image. (md5sum: 1c6f5af7c682b7ee5d01935bc11f37f6)

Bootable USB drive may be made from the files on the CD. See readme.txt on
the CD.

Floppy release, see below on how to use them

bd080526.zip (~1.4M) - Bootdisk image
(md5sum: 37889e4c540504e59132bdcdfe7f9bb7)
drivers1-080526.zip (~310K) - Disk drivers
(mostly PATA/SATA) (md5sum: 72ac1731c6ba735d0ac2746a30dbc3ee)
drivers2-080526.zip (~1.2M) - Disk drivers
(mostly SCSI) (md5sum: 30172bec657c85a5f1a0b43601452fb7)

Previous versions may sometimes be found here (also my site)
NOTE:
Versions before 0704xx will corrupt the disk on VISTA!

NOTE THAT THE BOOTDISK CONTAINS CRYPTHOGRAPHIC CODE, and that it may be
ILLEGAL to RE-EXPORT it from your country.

How to make the CD

Unzipped, there should be an ISO image file (cd??????.iso). This can be
burned to CD using whatever burner program you like, most support writing
ISO-images. Often double-clikcing on it in explorer will pop up the program
offering to write the image to CD. Once written the CD should only contain some
files like "initrd.gz", "vmlinuz" and some others. If it contains the image file
"cd??????.iso" you didn't burn the image but instead added the file to a CD. I
cannot help with this, please consult you CD-software manual or friends.

The CD will boot with most BIOSes, see your manual on how to set it to boot
from CD. Some will auto-boot when a CD is in the drive, some others will show a
boot-menu when you press ESC or F10/F12 when it probes the disks, some may need
to have the boot order adjusted in setup.

How to make the floppy

The unzipped image (bdxxxxxx.bin) is a block-to-block representation of the
actual floppy, and the file cannot simply be copied to the floppy. Special tools
must be used to write it block by block.

Unzip the bd zip file to a folder of your choice.
There should be 3 files: bdxxxxxx.bin (the floppy image) and rawrite2.exe
(the image writing program), and install.bat which uses rawrite2 to write
the .bin file to floppy.
Insert a floppy in drive A: NOTE: It will lose all previous data!
Run (doubleclick) install.bat and follow the on-screen instructions.
Thanks to Christopher Geoghegan for the install.bat file (some of it ripped
from memtest86 however)

Or from unix:

dd if=bd??????.bin of=/dev/fd0 bs=18k

How to make and use the drivers floppy

Simply copy the zip file onto an empty floppy.
You MUST NOT UNZIP THE ZIP FILE!
Depending on your hardware you may only need one of the driver sets or the
other, or maybe both.
To use, insert one of the driver floppies when asked for it after booting,
the zip file will be unzipped to memory.
If no drivers matched (no harddisk found), you can select 'f' from the main
menu to load the other driver set.
Then select 'd' to auto-start the new drivers (if it matches your hardware)
Sometimes it fails detecting the floppy change and you get an error, just
select 'f' again, it works the second time.
For more advanced users that uses this often, it is possible to unzip just
the drivers you need and zip them up into a new zip archive. The zip file name
must start with "drivers", the rest is ignored. (it unzips drivers*.zip)

Other places to go for password and disk recovery

Grenier's old DOS port +
other recovery items
How to fix it
if you lost your admin password for your ActiveDirectory. Thanks to John
Simpson.
Other ways to recover lost password etc at MCSE
World

G4IT-Group for IT

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Recover Password