Lock IT Down: Crack or reset lost administrator passwords with these tools

The bane of an IT professional's life is when administrator passwords are lost, stolen, or simply forgotten. For the unprepared, losing an admin password can cause extensive disruption to work flow and even business processes—not to mention the fact that it could be a potentially serious security problem. With that in mind, I'm going to explain the various approaches that can be taken when faced with this problem.

Words of warning
The methods described below are to be carried out at the administrator's risk. The products described below will often work on both Windows NT and Windows 2000, but you should read the product documentation to make sure the product will work in your environment.

Preventative maintenance
First, if you have not instituted the following basic policies for administrator password protection, then you should do so as soon as possible.

  1. The administrator account should be renamed to something obscure.
  2. No one in the IT department should be using the administrator account to carry out systems maintenance. This includes any scheduled tasks, which should run under an account with appropriate privileges.
  3. Change the current administrator password and write the new one down without telling anyone what it is (if using Windows 2000, you may have a different password for Directory Services Restoration, which also needs to be kept safe); make a second hard copy; seal each in a separate envelope; and ask your boss to put one in the company safe and the other in an offsite safe.
  4. Give requisite (granular) administrator privileges to any IT professional user account that needs them. Verify that group memberships are appropriate and don’t conflict.
  5. Forget about the administrator account until you have a real need for it, and if you can’t remember the password, then you know where to find it (based on step three).



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