The other day a buddy of mine had lost access to his Windows XP Administrator Account because he forgot his password. He turned to me for help and as usual I was willing to lend a hand. The following tutorial covers the process of resetting your administrator password on Windows XP or NT Operating Systems. Windows stores its user information, including encrypted versions of the passwords, in a file called sam. This file is commonly found in \winnt\system32\config. This file is also a part of the registry, in a binary format and not easily accessible. We will be using a utility called Offline NT Password and Registry Editor to preform the recovery.
Resetting a Lost Windows XP Administrator Password:
- Download the Offline NT Password and Registry Editor.
- Extract the ISO from the zip and burn the ISO to a CD or DVD using your favorite CD Burning utility
- Reboot your Windows XP computer and set your BIOS or Boot Menu to boot from the CD
- Follow the onscreen instructions to reset your Windows Administrator password
