lost system password - please help

[Wayne_48]

Hi, we have an Alpha Station 250 4/266 running OpenVMS 7.1 that we used to develop one of our applications but it was "retired" a couple years ago.
Needless to say it has become necessary to resurrect this machine and access the code to assist a client. Unfortunately nobody remembers what the system password is, and the one person who would have it tried a couple which didn't work, and has no record of it.
Is there some way to recover from this situation? I have tried doing to access the BIOS and boot with a floppy but that isn't working either.
Any assistance at all would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance for any feedback.

Cheers,
Wayne

[Burkart Beat]

Hi
This is easy.

Just follow that link:

http://h71000.www7.hp.com/wizard/faq/vmsfaq_005.html#mgmt5

Good luck

Beat

[Wayne_48]

Thanks Beat, I appreciate the help. Unfortunately when I try to do this I get the SYSBOOT prompt, get all the way through step 3 without a problem, but after continue I get this:

OpenVMS (TM) Alpha Operating System, version 7.1
%DECnet-I-LOADED, network base image loaded, version = 05.0C.00
%DECnet-W-NOOPEN, could not open SYS$SYSROOT:[SYSEXE]NET$CONFIG.DAT

Error opening primary input file SYS$INPUT
Directory not found
No such file

And then the machine just sits there. Any ideas?

Thanks Heaps,
Wayne

[Burkart Beat]

Hi Again

Good. Maybe you should add in SYSBOOT:

set startup_p1 "MIN"

This skips DECNET and all other Startup Scripts.

Regards
Beat

[Wayne_48]

Hi Beat, thanks again, but still no luck. I get the same error messages once I do continue.

Any other ideas?

Wayne

[Martin Johnson · Accepted solution]

Do the converstational boot. At the SYSBOOT prompt:

SET UAFALTERNATE 1
CONTINUE

If there is no alternate UAF file defined, you should be able to just hit at the password prompt when logginig into SYSTEM.

The errors you are receiving may indicate a hardware problem or a hardware configuration that is different from the original system. You will need to a minimum boot. At the SYSBOOT prompt:

SET STARTUP_P1 "MIN"

verify it is set properly:

SHOW STARTUP_P1

HTH
Marty