Locked Lappy

[Mighty_Jah]

Hi Peepz....a bloke has asked me to enquire if there is a way of accessing the data on his old lappy HD...via an external drive case..he's unfortunately locked the HD when it was a master Drive...I presume when he says locked he means its an admin logon with password.

Would swapping the drives...over possibly work if he sticks his old drive in the new lappy as master, I know it will surely have a moan, but this method sometimes works for towers, thus allowing the removal of data to the psuedo slave drive in the external.

then swapping them back over..?

just to clarify....
Laptop A is defunked HD A is ok but locked via admin
Laptop B is a new one
All drives are XP Pro

Or is there some nice software he can use to unlock the drive as an external.

Is this of any relevance? >> http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;308421

Not alot of info on specs etc at this point, appologies guys.

Any help as always, would be greatly appreciated...!

Cheers Mighty... :wink:

[Belso]

Just to be clear, (bit early)

You want to get the data off a admin passworded HDD?

Or you want help getting the admin password?

[Mighty_Jah]

Yeah mate..my post was a bit...vague..ish

The guy wants to retrieve a large amount of video data from his old drive, via externaly inputing it in to his new lappy, Id say this would be the least hassle, if he can get round the access issue.

Regards Mighty... :wink:

[Anonymous]

[Removed at the request of the author]

[Belso]

Seriously check this out:

http://www.loginrecovery.com/

If he wants the password recovered quickly its going to cost $10. But if it doesn't work you dont have to pay.

I seriously recommend this, its excellent!!! 8)

__

Have you got an external hard drive caddy? Like an Ice Box?

What we have at work is a Ice box - Laptop Convertor. (Not sure of real name)

So basically we can slave laptop hard drives, to anything with a USB connection. Try searching for one.

[Mighty_Jah]

Yep said dude has a HD caddy plugged in...I dont think he gets chance to input a password ...as the drive was a master...and is now a slave drive I think its just denying access to the drive.

so knowing the Admin password wouldnt help, I would imagine.

Cheers Mighty... :wink:

[Freudianslip]

Try this: http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/

[Sleepy]

There is a wonderful website with a whole load of really useful stuff for system builders and geeks alike! There are various tools here from bootdisks to utility cd's.

There is also a utility called Barts PE. Barts PE is one of the most useful tools that a tech can have in his/her arsenal. First and foremost is the ability to read NTFS drives without having to boot the machines actual OS. This makes spyware and virus removal incredibly easier because it is impossible for any file to be in use on the hard drive (because the machine is not booting from it!). It also makes registry repairs much easier because you don't have to mess around with the cryptic, restricted recovery console. Many more uses than i can remember here.

I just did a search to pass on the link only to find it is down atm. I will post it anyway so that you can all look for yourselves!

www.nu2.nu gets you to the homepage and then obviously have a look for the PE builder as i can't access the site to give the exact link. At least you can look around at the other great stuff here whilst you look for it!

EDIT:

Wasn't going to mention this as it turns out a password recovery is not needed. However, if anyone ever needs it, this is an excellent tool for password recovery. It is a bootable cd, or floppy if you prefer, which will tell you the password or even change the password without needing to know the old one! More info here:

http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/

[Freudianslip]

[quote:b09657ec9a=\"Techtalkonline\"]EDIT:

Wasn't going to mention this as it turns out a password recovery is not needed. However, if anyone ever needs it, this is an excellent tool for password recovery. It is a bootable cd, or floppy if you prefer, which will tell you the password or even change the password without needing to know the old one! More info here:

http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/[/quote:b09657ec9a]

/me points at my previous post :D

[Sleepy]

:oops:

Crikey, i must be getting old, my eyesight is going now! Well done Freudianslip, great minds think alike, even if yours is quicker than mine!

[Mighty_Jah]

Cheers Guys for all the help, found a few intresting reads and links after a good old Goog search...

Some interesting stuff here not just pass recovery >> http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/repair_xp.htm

More Here >> http://www.onecomputerguy.com/windowsxp_tips.htm


Regards Mighty...Cheers fellas... :wink:

[josbd]

Fred Langa also has some useful information here:

http://www.informationweek.com/security/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=BJH3AEYIIEZ04QSNDBECK H0CJUMEKJVN?articleID=13100343&pgno=2

[landwomble]

if it's a bios HDD password lock, such as used in thinkpads, then you're screwed. nothing short of an industrial clean room and several thousand quid will pull the data.
if it's a windows password, it's trivial. either boot off a nordahl p/w recovery cd (as linked earlier in the thread), or stick the drive in another PC as a secondary and take ownership of the files.
if it's EFS-encrypted BE VERY CAREFUL as if you delete the user account without backing up the cert you're hosed.

ric