Use Linux to reset Windows server administrator password

Jephe Wu http://linuxtechres.blogspot.com


It's possible you might forget your Windows server administrator password or it's locked after you tried too many times. But don't worry, there's a nice tool 'chntpw' which can help you to reset and unlock it. The following example was tested on Windows 2003 server.

1. download the Linux rescue CD - RIP(Recovery Is Possible)
note: to reduce download time. Non-X version is enough.
2. reboot your Windows server with this CD, you might want to choose option 2 to skip keyboard map
3. login as root without password
4. run the following commands to mount Windows 2003 server partition as read-write
cd /mnt

mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 win -o force (assuming your Windows partition is /dev/sda1, you can use fdisk command to find out)
note: to make sure you mounted Windows partition as read/write, you can try to run command
touch /mnt/win/testfile to confirm it won't give you any error.

cd win/WIN2K03/system32/config

chntpw SAM

then follow the screen instruction
first, answer y to reset/unlock the counters
then enter * to blank password
finally, enter y all the way to finish

5. finishing up
cd /mnt
sync
umount win
reboot

Note:
1. you can use chntpw SAM -l to list all Windows users
2. use chntpw SAM -u user1 to unlock/reset user1 password
3. http://www.tuxera.com/community/ntfs-3g-download/  (NTFS 3G website)