windows password help

[Law]

Hello, a friend of mine bought a new computer from future shop or best buy , one of the two

anyway her friend thought she woudl help her out by password protectign windows.

Now she doesnt know the password and cant get into windows at all.

I tried safe mode but you still need the password.

anything i can try that doesnt involve openign the system, she doesnt want tot do that?

[mander]

First question would be what OS is installed?

[Law]

Oh , sorry, its windows XP home edition

[eyetee]

If there is a user account other than the Administrator account, you can try starting it in safe mode. You will then get the option to select Administrator or another account. Choose Administrator but do not type a password, then hit Enter. You might get lucky.

[AlexTCM]

Try Astrumi which is a Linux based tool that can access Windows partitions. I tested it on a FAT32 formatted system partition. Don't know how effective it would be on an NTFS boot partition. It is actually based on another Linux tool (RegPass) and I have seen it in two flavors. One as a bootable CD and one a bootable floppy.
Obviously bootable floppy is much more convenient. Following is a link to the floppy based reset tool :
http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd

The following is the ISO CD based tool link :
http://sourceforge.net/projects/austrumi

My understanding is that since it resets the password, there is a possiblity of data loss for the Admin account (especially if any files were encrypted via EFS, you can kiss them goodbye forever).

[Lsv]

that tool is also in the ultimate boot cd, which is fantastic btw:P
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/