Quote:
Originally Posted by badwolf
super way off topic, but kinda related, my friend doesn't know his win server 2003 pw and the it guy wont return a call... whats best to recover it....
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I'm not sure if "super way off topic, but kinda related" is even possible...
But it depends if you want to recover the actual password or just reset it so you can use the account.
This will reset and is fairly easy. I've never used it with Win 2k3 but I don't see why it wouldn't work. The only downside to this method is if you have encrypted files, they will be unusable after the change.
http://home.eunet.no/pnordahl/ntpasswd/
If you want to actually recover the password, you need some type of password cracker and need to grab the SAM file from the system by booting from CD or something.
elcomsoft.com makes a few different crackers that are pretty decent, but if it is a strong password, it could be technically impossible (take way too long) to crack it unless you have a lot of processing power.
There are some password crackers that use rainbow tables and can be very fast, but you've got to download the huge rainbow tables if the password is any decent length / complexity.