Jacking a PC From work ???'s

[JW]

Okay the firm I work for will be declaring bankruptcy in a few weeks. I'm going to just take my HP Compaq Desktop with me.

My question is will I just have to log on it the way I always have (with a work ID & password) or will I be able to re-set it somehow so I am the administrator? (IE: Instead of the IT department....)

 

[sup]

A) its illegal.. but that being said

1. reformat it
2. use a linux boot disk to mount the drives, hack the SAM etc.
3. use a linux based admin disk with a windows administrator password reset utility
4. find some 14 year old computer geek to do it for you

so the answer is yes you can, it just depends on your computer skill level.

 

[Kaiser]

You will need to reset the admin password. There are a number of ways to do this along with the ways listed above. You can also use the Windows installation disk and boot to recovery mode. Migrate via command prompt to:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\config

Rename the file SAM to SAM.bak

Reboot.

Another way involves renaming logon.scr, and copying cmd.exe, naming it logon.scr. Reboot, wait 10 minutes, and instead of a screensaver kicking in, you'll have a cmd prompt with System rights instead.

 

[Kaiser]

Most likely its a domain account that loads a profile on his desktop machine. Can you confirm this?

You want to set yourself as a LOCAL administrator so you even have a real account on the box...

This is why I said rename SAM.

 

[Kaiser]

Every user and SID would be lost. No services would start up, not even the local ones. If you happen to have an ERD with you great, but that puts you back where you started with the same SAM or the one from the last save. Same as booting from "Last Known Good Configuration." If you use the recovery from the installation CD, you would lose all user data associated with the user/SID. So you have admin access and a bunch of broken apps and users.

There are Linux based options to EDIT the SAM and over write the administrator passwd. This is the only way if you want your computer to run the same as it did before.

I'd just back up at work, and format the shit and reinstall everything.

I'm a unix admin, so my windows experience is limited.

Unix is different.
For Windows if you rename SAM file your local admin account will have no password on next reboot and a new SAM file will be recreated. It does not affect any system SIDS or services on a Windows box. Local SIDS for normal system accounts are the same SID from box to box. They look like this:

S-1-5-18
or
S-1-5-19

4 numbers instead of a long normal username account SID that has local or domain descriptors. Deleting or renaming SAM will only delete locally created accounts like computername\mike, etc, but in that case he probably wasn't using one of those because of the domain. It also will not delete the data from local accounts obviously and if he logs into the box on reboot with admin, he will be able to get to all of it anyway.

For more information:
http://alieneyes.wordpress.com/2006/07/18/reset-administrator-password-2/
http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10877_11-6146878.html
http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/thread-1581910.php
**broken link removed**

After you log in as Admin, you can then reset the password on another account that is local to the box, then remove it from the domwin. When you go to remove it from the domain logged in as admin, it will prompt you for username and password. Leave them blank and just click OK. These credentials are only needed to remove the object from Active Directory.

To get into a domain controller, the logon.scr replaced by cmd.exe to allow a cmd prompt will do it. At that point run dsa.msc from the prompt and you can reset any password.