Hello all. I need some dire help for my job

I work for a small private highschool as a teacher and other around the house type of tasks. Well, they know i have a bachelors in Network engineering and computers. So they have tasked me to fix there win xp issues.

However, they do not know the admin password at all. It was never written down. the reason for that, 10 or so years ago, the IT guy installed a thirdparty program that limits pretty much any access to anything. As in, there is no My computer icon or documents or anything accessable by students. Well after he installed all this, the owner had a tragic accident and school was closed for 2 years. it reopened and most paperwork was lost.

i tried to use the lusrmgr.msc service to reset password for admin, but when i click reset password, it says access denied. haha.

i have tried in safe mode, cmd, have tried to do ctrl+del twice and nothing.

Is there a way to use a live cd to find out what the password is or at least reset it so i can install the new printer and google sketchup?

thanks

i used a live-cd years ago (i think it was called ntpasswd) that would reset the password for nt-5 pc's.

why dont you just install some linux distro on it ?

There are many ways to do this: Google has close to 1 million hits, some of which are:
http://pcsupport.about.com/od/tipstr...rgetxppass.htm
http://www.askvg.com/how-to-reset-re...ator-password/
http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Reset_a_Windows_XP_Password

...and some that show how to use Linux to perform such things:
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windo...tem-rescue-cd/

However...why bother? If these are old Windows XP machines, they're unsupported now. If you're at a school, and want basic document editing/web access, why not load Mint with Libreoffice for free, and format those old XP machines? If the school has been closed for two years, there's nothing you need on those drives. Move forward with something new; either Ubuntu or Mint can run in 'kiosk mode', which will essentially lock down EVERYTHING, except what you put on the desktop. From some of the many hits in Google:

https://encrypted.google.com/#q=linux+mint+kiosk+mode
https://sites.google.com/site/easyli...irst-mint-xfce
http://www.instructables.com/id/Sett...Web-Appliance/

...even that may be overkill. If these are for online use only, why not use a 'live' version of things? Put the whole OS onto a bootable thumb drive.

I sugessted linux and the owners son knows linux as well, but to transfer all the documents and reinstall stuff is a pain in the butt and they want it locked down tight because the students here that we deal with have been in and out of institutions so we have to be careful.

They have to have powerpoint and excell here in order to be acredited by state and federal standards. haha. To run it through wine would be ok i guess. haha

we have tried all the above, i get access denied from everything because of that stupid software haha. I will be contacting an old employee to see if they have it.

thanks

sorry, for some reason when i hit reply, it posted the same question again in the forum. sorry bout that. anyway, looks as if someone who used to work here said to try one last password and it worked yayayaya!!!. haha

if i could get all the programs we use here to work on linux, i would so do it. We need office 2010, sketchup 8, and then a few others like k9 web filter and what not.

maybe i can talk them into it. oh but it needs to hook up to the domain here which is a windows server.

LibreOffice 4 will open MS powerpoint
and will open all the OLD and antique MS office 2002/3 xls files

mind you, NONE of the OLD xp office versions will open any NEW Microsoft office formats

I expect the computer has a CD drive and you have some other computer on which you could download a .iso image to burn to a CD.

There are links already in this thread for Linux bootable CD images that include a program that will reset the admin password on an XP system. You could also boot any Linux liveCD, then once it is booted download (into the live boot's ram disk) a copy of chntpw, which can also be used to change XP passwords.

I'm at work now and the site for chntpw is blocked (as malware) so I can't give you a URL or better instructions now, but it is pretty easy to figure out. (It is not malware in the traditional sense. It is just a tool that could be abused by anyone with physical access to boot a CD drive. So blocking the site is silly).

do you mean that they have to provide a slide presentation application and a spreadsheet application or does the accreditation specifically mandate the microsoft branded pwerpoint and ms excel.

that would be like the government mandating all math books have to be printed by addison-wellesley (tm).

Dual post.

Please post your thread in only one forum. Posting a single thread in the most relevant forum will make it easier for members to help you and will keep the discussion in one place. This thread is being closed because it is a duplicate of https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...lp-4175509902/