Success Story: Port Williams Password & Registry Hacking >:D

So this was an interesting 1-on-1 that lasted for a number of hours. She doesn't want her photo taken or anything along those lines, so you'll just have to believe my story!

During the winter I had a weekly sessions with Joanna, using the library PC's to complete various work assignments. As the weeks went on, and she became more and more comfortable with using a computer, she opted to make the big purchase and showed up with an ASUS laptop on one of our last days together. I was delighted to see that she took such a huge step, and we proudly went through the setup of Windows, web browsers, anti-virus and everything that goes along with gearing up a new computer.

After that was all said and done, we said our goodbyes, and I sent her into the world as a new computer user. However, somewhere along the lines, her Windows login password was changed, and she unfortunately forgot what this had been changed to. She booked a one-on-one session with me in Port Williams, and brought me her laptop, which she had not been able to use for weeks.

First, we checked the password hint. No good. Then, I tried logging in with an administrator account. Still no luck. I tried booting into safe mode, and was still prompted to input the troublesome password. It seemed like we were running out of options besides completely reinstalling Windows.

Before I go any further.. This would NOT have been such a problem if we had initially taken the time to create a password recovery disk with the Windows control panel during the initial setup of the machine. If you haven't done this and you happen to forget you're windows password, YOU'RE GONNA HAVE A BAD TIME.

Anyways, I began Googling some potential solutions, and found that I could create a boot disk with some password-cracking tools which may fix the problem. My first attempt was to create a boot disk of OPHCrack, and attempt to decrypt the password using that. After I ran the password cracker for an hour and a half, it came back with the message "Password not found."

:-/

Back to the drawing board. We were about 2 1/2 hours into our session at this point, as I had nothing booked after her. I just couldn't let her leave with a brick of a laptop in her carrying bag.

The second time turned out to be the charm, as I created a boot disk of Offline NT Password & Registry Editor. Bingo. Using this command line tool, I was able to easily gain access to the Windows registry and completely clear out her password in a matter of seconds. I won't go into the potential malicious use of this particular tool, but for my very ethical purposes, it turned out to be a life-saver.

So I'd like to send out a big thank you to the creators of the Offline NT Password & Registry Editor, who did a great job of making me look smarter than I actually am. Cheers.