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Gaprofitt
Contributor
Contributor

Resetting Windows 2000 local passwords with Virtual Machine

HI All,

I just joined a new company and we have an issue where we have all kinds of Windows 2000 computers and we have no clue what the passwords are nor do we have administrative access to them. We are building a new domain and I need to move these computers over. Most of these machines are not local to me so I need a way to reset the Windows admin logins. I know this can be accomplished using boot cd's using various tools but I need to be able to do it remotely. I was thinking maybe somehow I could do this booting into a VM on the physical machine, but I guess I wouldn't have access to the physical drives.

Any suggestions would be great.

Thanks,

Greg

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6 Replies
TomHowarth
Leadership
Leadership

if you have domain admin rights you can change the passwords when logged on. do you have remote access to them either via a ILo or VNC

alternatively you could script the password change

see

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/272530

for futher info

Tom Howarth VCP / VCAP / vExpert
VMware Communities User Moderator
Blog: http://www.planetvm.net
Contributing author on VMware vSphere and Virtual Infrastructure Security: Securing ESX and the Virtual Environment
Contributing author on VCP VMware Certified Professional on VSphere 4 Study Guide: Exam VCP-410
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Ken_Cline
Champion
Champion

To boot into a VM and have access to the host resources, take a look at Ulli's site at http://www.sanbarrow.com

Ken Cline VMware vExpert 2009 VMware Communities User Moderator Blogging at: http://KensVirtualReality.wordpress.com/
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TomHowarth
Leadership
Leadership

Ken I beleive that he is taking about physical servers at the moment.

Tom Howarth VCP / VCAP / vExpert
VMware Communities User Moderator
Blog: http://www.planetvm.net
Contributing author on VMware vSphere and Virtual Infrastructure Security: Securing ESX and the Virtual Environment
Contributing author on VCP VMware Certified Professional on VSphere 4 Study Guide: Exam VCP-410
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Ken_Cline
Champion
Champion

Yep...Ulli allows you to boot a physical server off of a CD or USB stick into a virtual environment. From there, you can do just about anything you want...

Ken Cline VMware vExpert 2009 VMware Communities User Moderator Blogging at: http://KensVirtualReality.wordpress.com/
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Gaprofitt
Contributor
Contributor

Definetly we have no domain rights and I am talking about the local administrator passwords on physical desktop computers.

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continuum
Immortal
Immortal

I was thinking maybe somehow I could do this booting into a VM on the physical machine, but I guess I wouldn't have access to the physical drives.

You can do that with moa: start a physical box and launch the existing system as a VM - but does that help you ?

Basic tools for setting of new passwords are included in ubcd4win - google knows.

Be careful - if the admin had used that password to encrypt drives or directories you shoot yourself in the foot.

Better is to use a tool that creates a new admin-account.

I have one of this tools in my BartPE but don't remember the name right now


________________________________________________
Do you need support with a VMFS recovery problem ? - send a message via skype "sanbarrow"
I do not support Workstation 16 at this time ...

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