i have a laptop (dell inspiron 9100) which was given to me virus infected. ran a avast antivirus boot scan, which removed hundreds of infections, but now every time it boots it asks for a username and password.
Problem is that the owner had it set to auto login and doesn’t know what the password is:kickbum:
I need to get off this laptop a fair bit of information, and so cannot connect into windows to get anything off.
I have a old version of knoppix somewhere but will that be able to access the NTFS hdd and network enable itself so i can pull it all back onto my main rig?
Other than that, the best case scernario would be if i can just get it to auto login again (any idea?:whiteflag: )or is it a case of trying to repair windows and keep my figures crossed?
Suggest you Google “windows xp lost password”. The hits I got on utilities that will either read existing Admin passwords, or reset them was downright depressing. Sort of blew my illusions of having a secured system right out of the water.
A linux boot CD would seem best option although I’m not familiar with what’s hot or not in that respect.
Alternatively take the HD out and connect it to another PC. Being a lappy disk you would need either a connector adapter to take it to regular IDE or get one of the cheep 2.5 inch USB adapters off the likes of ebay.
XP Home is another story. The Home edition has a window of opportunity between the BIOS screen and when the windows screen appears (this is when the screen is completely black). Via keystrokes you are supposed to interrupt the normal boot process. As luck would have it, I don’t remember if its a ^C or an ESC or what.
…Found this on the web…
Reboot, tapping F8 each second.
Select Safe Mode at the menu.
Select Administrator, leave password blank.
I think Mackeral has the best option. Find or download a linux live CD. Use that to find your NTFS disk and you should be able to recover most of the data you need. You may need to download additional tools though and you will need somewhere to store the data you retrieve (ie another disk or networked machine etc.)
As an alternative, pop it into a known working XP box, but only if you are happy that it is now virus free. It should appear just as a normal drive.
Lastly, when you do get in, you may want to use some of the tools DanBrady mentioned. NirSoft have a very good (and as far as I can tell “clean”) range. But if you go down the password tools route be careful - using a sledgehammer to crack a nut may not leave much of the nut left worth having. Or put another way Caveat Emptor when using password warez.
Cheers for all your suggestions, Tom its lucky for it is actualy on Home edition, so first port of call will try that process, and then it would be easy as.
Failing that i think a nix boot cd is the option, i have loaded up knnopix now, but because i am a Window SLg i am not sure what todo now, for it isn’t as easy as find the hard drive and networking it, for it doesn’t seem to find one at all.
If not i will try that password ‘cracker (if thats the right word’ andgive it ago.
All this hassle and jsut because the user didn’t renew his FREE avast registration :@
if anyone other than someon who knows has set it up, got to the login screen, hit alt ctrl del twice, you get the old style 2000 login, use administrator as the login name, and a blank password (howmany people set that during setup?) and bingo your in.
Damski : Nice idea, tho i think that i actualy set this machine up in the first place:wall: and so would have set the admin passowrd to a password of the users choice (didn’t expect it back you see) tho wortha shot
Tom i cant beleive it, safe mode, administrator, no apssword and you get access! save me a lot of hassle i can tell you.
Was interested if there was actualy a administrtor password, so logged in normaly and doing the same thing said that i couldn’t be authenticated!
So all backup files being copied to a network area where they will be virus scaned by as many different scanners i can get a hold of before putting them back on to his machine.
I cant believe my Friends luck.
Now he has brought his office pc round saying that it will not turn on. He said he was using it like normal, then the screen froze and nothing moved or worked. He turned it off and now when he turns it back onagain the fans all turn on, the hDD seems to be spinning all ok but no picture is displayed.
I have reseated all cards and cables, reset teh bios, tried a PCI GPU (for i dont have a spare agp) and still nothing.
Im trying to get a hold of a spare AGP for i suppose it could be due to this but also i suppose it could be the motherboard.
HAs anyone got any other suggestions to what to look for?
Oh i dont get any posting Beeps or anything like that either.
Try removing all the cards and see if it will POST without anything other than the motherboard or RAM. Could be a card gone bad (I had an internal modem that caused this to happen).
well after closer inspection i believe it to be the mobo:
PSU is new and tested fine;
unplugged all apart from agp gpu, no screen, tried known working gpu, no screen;
tried pci gpu, no screen
