NEED HELP!..PASSWORD LOCKOUT at LOGIN

[bama.mal]

I have a Fujitsu notebook...a Lifebook 142 that someone gave me a while back and I just got around to looking at it and it works!....It has windows 2000 Pro on it but I do not know the password to get past the Login screen!...I know this is a dangerous subject because you never can tell what is really going on but I would like to use it to download the pics from my didital camera to....it's so small it is perfect and has 2 USB ports!....I heard that I might be able to use a Linux boot disk to get in....I don't know....Mal...

[DMR]

Hi bama.mal, welcome to the site :)

I know this is a dangerous subject because you never can tell what is really going on...

Unfortunately, you're right. Bypassing password protection is a "dangerous subject", for just the reason you state: we have no way of knowing if a member who asks for help in that regard has good or bad intentions. The reality is that we leave ourselves open to possible legal action if we offer advice in "grey areas" such as this.

With that in mind, please understand my action here: I am going to temporarilly lock this thread until I can contact our site's administrator and get her take/word on your particular question.

In the mean time, I'll suggest the obvious: contact the "someone" who gave you the computer and ask him/her what the possible passwords might be.

[DMR]

Ok- thread reopened. The concensus is that you probably aren't an Evil Hacker. :mrgreen:

There are a number of tools you can use to recover or change a forgotten password, and yes, some of them do involve a Linux boot disk. The reason being that Linux can access Windows drives/partitions, but it totally ignores Windows permissions and passwords.

Here are a couple of links which discuss some of the options:

http://www.petri.co.il/forgot_administrator_password.htm
http://is-it-true.org/nt/atips/atips262.shtml

And here are the results of a general Google search on the subject:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22windows+2000%22+password+recovery&spell=1

[bama.mal]

.....Ok!...Thanx....I went to those sites that were listed and got some great help and everything is up and running now!.....Mal...

[DMR]

Very cool; glad we could help. :)