From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-ID: <6e35c0620507180946529d4df8@mail.gmail.com> Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2005 09:46:12 -0700 From: Jack Johnson To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@cse.psu.edu> Subject: Re: [9fans] First-timer help In-Reply-To: <31f30aa8225d815c5871f3397bc51525@ar.aichi-u.ac.jp> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline References: <49460fd96304713b16408f43232eecf9@plan9.ucalgary.ca> <42DAB5EB.3020109@moseslake-wa.com> <31f30aa8225d815c5871f3397bc51525@ar.aichi-u.ac.jp> Topicbox-Message-UUID: 6a5fa47c-ead0-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 On 7/18/05, arisawa@ar.aichi-u.ac.jp wrote: > this remind me that I forgot win2000 password. > I decided to reboot the computer and reinstalled the OS. > I didn't know how to rescue my data. There is a fun trick you can do on NT/2K/XP (though it's less effective on XP) if you have a Win2K installation CD. If you've forgotten/lost the local administrator's password (and other administrative accounts are otherwise unavailable), you can use the Win2K installation CD to boot to a recovery console. The XP installation CD correctly prompts you for the local administrative password, but the 2K CD does not, even for XP installations. You cannot easily change the administrative password from the recovery console, but you can modify certain files. The trick is to rename the default screensaver (logon.scr usually), and just copy the command prompt in it's place (cmd.exe), then reboot and wait. After x minutes the system will happily give you a command prompt with system-level privileges. If the machine is on a domain, the machine itself still has a domain account, and any network share that allows Everyone read/write access is available, so you can map the share to a drive and backup your files or take other measures to recover your data. The command line FTP client would work just as well, I suppose. USB support seems to be limited, though. -Jack