I lost my administrator password

[jatheson]

I lost my administrator password for windows 2003 enterprise so what can i do???

[Thomas Bianco]

bad luck for you, but you're not without options.

you could log in as any user with local administrative privlages and change it. of course, you probably don't have another admin user, or you wouldn't be asking.

you could restore the "system state" from the last time you knew the password, if you have backups that far back. problem is: you'll loose all system changes since then.

you could do a parallel install, replacing the c:\winnt\system32\config\SAM file with one from a system you know the password to, or simply moving it to reset back to the install default of Administrator/Blank. parallel install means you install another copy of windows to a second folder on the same disk. you'll have to remember to change the sid, and rejoin the domain.

if you own a copy of NTFSDos, you could use a boot disk to boot the system and do the above changes without reinstalling windows.

you could do a reinstall to reset the password.

there are many comercial recovery packages, and most a fairly afordable.

let us know how it turns out. good luck

[Steven Clementi]

Passware has a nifty password reset utility and is VERY simple to use.

It does not clear/wipe/damage your system in anyway... only resets the admin password to what you want. The only issue that might arrise is that you must use a Windows 2003 install CD to run the Setup wizard... at which point you would press F6 to "specify additional drives", supply the floppy with the passware driver on it and when the text mode setup gets to part 2, it puts you into a dos type environment, prompts you to set the password... and reboots.


Steven

[Alan Marshall_1]

There is a fantastic tool to handle this situation, check:

http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/

Good Luck!

[Nuwan Wijesundera]

just try this url.However I haven't tried or tested this process.
http://www.petri.co.il/reset_domain_admin_password_in_windows_server_2003_ad.htm