Johnny Helpdesk

Now, let's fire up Petter's CD boot disk and reset a password. Upon putting the boot disk in, we get a welcome screen as shown in Figure 4. If needed, some simple Linux boot options can be specified at this boot screen, but most people can simply hit <enter> or just wait and the boot will continue automatically after about 30 seconds. After several pages of diagnostic information scroll by, the Linux kernel finishes loading and Petter's "Change NT Password" (chntpw) utility is automatically executed.

This chntpw utility prints an introduction, tells us what it can and cannot do as well as some available options. We are immediately asked to select the disk and partition where the user account we wish to modify is stored. Generally, this software guesses the correct options for us and all we have to do is confirm the suggestions by hitting the <enter> key. See Figure 5.

Figure 4	Figure 5

Next, we are asked to specify the path to the Windows Registry. However, again, the software has already correctly guessed the location and all we have to do is hit <enter> to accept this default. Once the Registry is loaded, we are asked if we would like to reset a password (yes!) or use Recovery Console Parameters. By default the password reset option is selected for us, so again, we just hit <enter>--see Figure 6.

The chntpw utility proceeds to load three Windows Registry hives--SAM, SYSTEM and SECURITY--after which it prompts us for our next course of action. And...you guessed it! Hitting <enter> will allow us to select a Windows user account to edit, as shown in Figure 7.

Figure 6	Figure 7

Now, the default user password to reset is the Administrator account. So if you are interested in resetting a password for a different account, then this is the first place where we actually have to type something in. In this case, the password I wish to reset is for the standard_admin account, so that's what I type in. The chntpw utility then proceeds to display information and statistics about that account and presents options to clear the password, change it to something else, promote the user to an administrator (if not already), or enable the account if disabled.

To clear the password for the selected user, just type "1" and hit <enter>. You will then be told that the password has been cleared, although in reality the change hasn't actually been saved to disk yet. To do that, you'll need to type "!" to quit the user menu, followed by "q" again to quit the main password recovery menu. See Figure 8.

You will then be prompted to save any changes which have been made, and to do so, you will have to type "y" and hit <enter>. The utility will proceed by asking you if you want to do another run of the program. In our case we don't, so I just hit <enter> to select the default of no.

The chntpw utility then finishes by returning us to a Linux shell and informs us we can reboot the computer by hitting CTRL-ALT-DEL--see Figure 9.

Figure 8	Figure 9