Bypassing Windows XP Home Logon?
 

Is it possible without a format? My dad set up his Administrator Password, and basically left his machine on for a month or so. Then he forgot his password, and now he has no idea what his hint means.

Is it possible to bypass the logon in such a way as to have full access to the system? As in, could we then set up a new password?

I did find this page, but I'm not sure I understand exactly what he did.

It sounds like this happened:

1) Burn a boot disk with the program he linked, boot with disk.
2) Replace logon.scr with cmd.exe (so when the screensaver is supposed to come on, it instead goes to a command prompt)
3) Remove boot disk and reboot, then launch explorer? Can anyone verify this?


I think I'll try it this way, but I really don't feel like spending a lot of time on it, so it might be a while before I do.

Edit: I found an answer. I found a utility to do exactly what I wanted - bypass a password and change it or reset it. As far as I know, it works in all versions of XP. http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/

Also allows you to edit the registry without booting Windows.