Windows XP Pro Login Debacle

[Buck]

A customer of mine has a 1 year old Dell desktop system that runs Windows XP Professional. He claims to have updated his Symantec software and now Windows requires a login password from him. He never used one before, login was automatic. However, now that this process has transpired, he cannot access his sytem, he doesn't know what the password is. He contacted Symantec, they refuse to help, he contacted Dell, the refused to help, he contacted Microsoft, and they will be happy to help, as long as he backs up his data first.

He cannot find his Windows XP Pro install that came with the Dell system, so he went to the store and purchased another copy.

It would be nice to just hack his login and gain access, but nobody has an Administrator password either. I could easily hook his drive up to another system, copy his critical business data and then run a re-install of XP.

Any way to hack this system without losing data and reinstalling the os again?

 

[Mercutio]

Sysinternals makes a utility to do that, and I think there are Linux-based tools to do the same thing. PM me if you need more info.

 

[blakerwry]

http://www.petri.co.il/forgot_administrator_password.htm



or I suppose you could reinstall XP ontop of itself.

 

[sechs]

Forget this hacking crap. Make them pay for their mistakes!

 

[blakerwry]

i sure he already paid eymantec for them to tell him they won't help. Their support is utter crap (pay for the product, if anything goes wrong pay for support), anyway you look at it they get your money.