lost password

I'm not sure if you can put the system disk in and boot from it and it will let you in or if you need to do this.

Forgot the Administrator's Password.

If this does not help, try posting this in the Microsoft OS Forum.

Rick

DO NOT REFORMAT THE DRIVE OR DO A SYSTEM RESTORE!!!

This is unnecessary. There are plenty of tools out there to perform this function and some of them are free. I know of Lophtcrack. Now I haven't tried lophtcrack with Vista but I have used it many times with XP and it works like  charm. However, it was purchased by Symantec and they have tried to kill it ever since. I do have a clean copy of an older version I still use.

Also, another good tool to use is ERD Commander from Winternals Software ($$$). The idea behind ERD Commander is that you can boot the machine using a set of floppy disks or a CD. Rather than booting to Windows, you're booting to the ERD Commander's own operating system. By doing so, you have access to the system's partitions, but Window's security is not in effect. This gives you the freedom to do what needs to be done without any restrictions. ERD Commander allows you to reset the Administrator or any other password without logging on to the system. All you need is physical access to the machine.

One of the things I like about ERD Commander is that it's based on the original Windows code. This means that if your hard disks are part of a RAID array, the utility will still recognize them, in most cases. You can access and reset the Administrator password (or other local accounts) on a machine with almost any hardware configuration.

Tweetiepie,

I recommend the Offline NT Password & Registry Editor on the link given by PudgyOne.  If you have any problems creating the bootable CD version, or using it, please let us know.

Tony