josh817 Posted December 29, 2011 Share Posted December 29, 2011 Well while we were sleeping apparently my mothers computer took a dump. It lost power on the back connections and the front connections. No mouse, no keyboard, no display. Tried rebooting, tried reseating the RAM and all connections, put in a known good power supply; nothing worked. This is an older computer so we don't really mind we just want to get her up and running again. I pulled out our other desktop that is around the same age and reformatted it and I also installed the the SATA hard drive from the dead computer into this one. She can use the SATA drive for whatever she wants while Windows runs off of the old drive. Alright so here is my problem. I tried booting the computer with the SATA drive as it has Windows XP on it too, but it wouldn't boot successfully. Now I just have it plugged in the computer runs off of it's normal hard drive. My mom has a lot of pictures on the SATA drive though as well as a ton of documents that were on her Desktop. I go into the SATA drive >>> Documents and Settings >>> see the users >>> open "Mom" or "Courtney" (my sister) but because these users were password protected before, I can't get into them. Is there any way for me to get into these accounts to get the documents from her desktop? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kiwi303 Posted December 30, 2011 Share Posted December 30, 2011 microsoft password protection is around as waterproof as a colander... google Microsoft Password bypass... there is a little password file sitting somewhere in your windows folder you can edit to change/remove the password protection. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
josh817 Posted December 30, 2011 Author Share Posted December 30, 2011 (edited) That's good news. Poor Mom... this old beast is slower than the computer she was using, just by a little bit. Everything was working fine until I installed windows update SP3 on it. Thing went to hell after that. I had to call it the night and stop working on it because it's so frustrating to go from my desktop, back in time, to that desktop. I wonder how I ever played games on it. Anyway, I will try that. It has all the system files still on it. I remember sometime last year I had burned a CD with an image program or something and you pop it in on boot up. Type a few things in the command prompt and it would remove the password on whatever account. However, this would require the computer to successfully boot up and won't work in my scenario. Edited December 30, 2011 by josh817 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BLOZ UP Posted December 30, 2011 Share Posted December 30, 2011 So you have the hard disk in another Windows machine? You should be able to take ownership off the user folders if you are logged in as an administrator on the new machine: Right click user's folder under Docs and Settings, select Properties. Open the security tab, click on advanced, then owner. Select your current username on that machine Then give your self full control and apply to all files and subfolders... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
josh817 Posted December 30, 2011 Author Share Posted December 30, 2011 Ahhh perfect Nick... I was going to say... all the stuff I am reading is showing ways to figure out how to bruteforce the binary format that XP uses in its password file but... we already know the password since it's Mom's old PC... I will try what you said real fast, Nick. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
josh817 Posted December 30, 2011 Author Share Posted December 30, 2011 (edited) Ehhhh there isn't a security tab. Three tabs on top when I right click on user >>> properties >>> tabs: "General" "Sharing" "Customize" There is an "advance" button in the bottom right but this doesn't lead to any access controls. Edited December 30, 2011 by josh817 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BLOZ UP Posted December 30, 2011 Share Posted December 30, 2011 (edited) Oops, too used to domain computers. In any folder, goto Tools>Folder Options: View Tab Scroll down and uncheck simple file sharing, apply, and reopen the dialog. It should show up then. Edited December 30, 2011 by BLOZ UP Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
josh817 Posted December 30, 2011 Author Share Posted December 30, 2011 (edited) Oops, too used to domain computers. In any folder, goto Tools>Folder Options: View Tab Scroll down and uncheck simple file sharing, apply, and reopen the dialog. It should show up then. Not showing anything about file sharing... I don't understand why that would be under the View Tab either but that's beside the point. Tried unchecking that third box, the only one that has "simple" in it, and that didn't do anything.... Edited December 30, 2011 by josh817 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BLOZ UP Posted December 31, 2011 Share Posted December 31, 2011 Under the sharing tab of the folder? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
josh817 Posted December 31, 2011 Author Share Posted December 31, 2011 (edited) Under the sharing tab of the folder? Duuuuuuude are we still talking about XP lol Tried dragging it to the shared folder and said I can't copy the file. Edited December 31, 2011 by josh817 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BLOZ UP Posted December 31, 2011 Share Posted December 31, 2011 Yeah, what version of XP do you have? Pro or home? That might be it: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308421 What I was trying to get across is that you can take ownership of any file on any disk attached to the computer if you are an admin on that computer. That will solve your issues. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
josh817 Posted December 31, 2011 Author Share Posted December 31, 2011 Ahhhh safe mode. I will try that out.It makes sense, what you're saying, just have to figure out how to pull up the right things! I'm surprised I could even use this hard drive. This computer was from 2003 and it had SATA plugs on the motherboard... For some reason I thought SATA was a new thing... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
josh817 Posted December 31, 2011 Author Share Posted December 31, 2011 Worked beautifully in safe mode, thanks Nick. Found out Mom has been holding back on me with pictures... So many funny family photo-bombs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GOTHALOSISM Posted January 3, 2012 Share Posted January 3, 2012 If this happens again download hiren's boot disk then burn it to a bootable disk. It will allow you to do all sorts of things for hard drive recovery, password ect.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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