Tag Archives: password

How to reset an administrator password on a Windows 2003 server

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I found an old server under a desk at work and needed to determine if there was any usable data on it before disposing of it. It was a standalone Windows 2003 r2 server which was a member of a workgroup and not our domain so I could not use a domain password. I asked around, and nobody knew the password and none of the old passwords given to me worked either.

I had a copy of Hiren’s boot cd which I booted the server from, and chose the password tools. In there is Active Password Changer which was able to find the SAM file, and get the user names from it. I was then able to set the Administrator user to have no password.

You do need physical access to the server to perform this, but I had reset the password to blank in about 3 minutes with the help of this free tool.

Password or passphrase??

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This is the first tip – Always make a passphrase rather than a password!!

I have had hundreds of passwords in my time, and about 2 years ago decided to move to passphrases instead.

Passwords can be difficult to remember if you have to make them complex as is required by network and website admins these days, and as a result a lot of people simply write them down on a post-it and stick it on the edge of their monitors.

Rather than using a password such as password123 or C3Tv8Bx?  etc which are either too simple to guess, or too complex to remember, why not use a passphrase such as “why do we need these passwords anyway” .

It is near impossible to guess, and brute forcing it would take a supercomputer. By the time you cracked it, the data may not be worth anything anyway.