China DOS Union

A friend of mine had a computer with the Windows XP operating system installed. He accidentally forgot the password for the system login user “zhangbq”, and no emergency disk had been made during installation either, so he came to me hoping I could solve the problem. After trying many methods, I finally succeeded in finding two ways to solve it. I will now introduce these two methods below:

　　1. Using the NET command

　　As we know, Windows XP provides the “net user” command, which can add and modify user account information. Its syntax is:

　　net user ]

　　net user

　　net user ]

　　The specific meaning of each parameter is already explained in detail in Windows XP Help, so I will not go into that here. Now, taking restoring the password of the local user “zhangbq” as an example, let me explain the steps for solving a forgotten login password:

　　1. Restart the computer, and as soon as the startup screen appears press the F8 key, then choose “Safe Mode with Command Prompt.”

　　2. When the loading process is finished, the system will list a selection menu for the system superuser “administrator” and the local user “zhangbq”. Click “administrator” with the mouse to enter command-line mode.

　　3. Type the command: “net user zhangbq 123456 /add” to forcibly change the password of user “zhangbq” to “123456”. If you want to add a new user here instead (for example: username abcdef, password 123456), type “net user abcdef 123456 /add”. After adding it, you can use the command “net localgroup administrators abcdef /add” to promote the user to the system administration group “administrators”, giving it superuser privileges.

　　4. Restart the computer, choose normal mode, and you can then log in as user “zhangbq” with the changed password “123456”.

　　2. Using “administrator”

　　As we know, during the Windows XP installation process, it first logs in by default as “administrator”, and then it asks you to create a new account so that when entering Windows XP you can use this new account to log in. On the Windows XP login screen, only this created user account will appear, and “administrator” will not appear. But in fact the “administrator” account still exists, and its password is blank.

　　Once we understand this, if the login password is forgotten, at the login screen hold down Ctrl+Alt, then press the Del key twice, and the classic login screen will appear. At that point type “administrator” in the username field, leave the password blank, enter the system, and then change the password for “zhangbp”.

　　So, if you have forgotten your Windows XP login password, why not hurry up and give it a try.

This approach could not be more naive. A so-called forgotten password should mean that even the “administrator” password has been forgotten. The “administrator” password is prompted for during installation; if you ignored it then, the “administrator” account would have a blank password (I recommend logging in through the graphical interface). Since it is a blank password, the above login method can hardly be called “logging in after forgetting the password.” For cracking the 2000/XP “administrator” password, the best thing should be Lock Smith in ERD Commander 2002.

The poster above seems to have a better method. Could you explain it in more detail?

nerdpal is right. If you really forgot the password, there is absolutely no way the Net command could succeed. If it were that easy, I would have stopped using this kind of operating system long ago, hehe.
I also like using ERD Commander 2002, this superb Windows NT system maintenance tool.

Moderator on post #4, please give a detailed introduction to how to use ERD Commander 2002.