Brendan Cornelius

If you are a new user to the Linux operating system it can be difficult to get information and advice from some expeienced users. I have found some podcasts which helped me learn alot about Linux OS and made the transition from from the Windows environment alot more easier. Check out these Podcasts: Linux Reality Going Linux Linux Install Podcast The Linux Reality podcast ran from February, 2006 through March, 2008 and more than 100 episodes were produced. The host of Linux Reality, Chess Griffin did a fantastic job and I promise this podcast will make a big difference to your Linux experience. Check it out.

So we recently had an issue where we needed to run Checkdisk on a XP box and we did not have the administrator password to proceed. This was a good oportunity to try out Ophcrack which we downloaded a few days earlier. Ophcrack is an open source (GPL licensed) program that cracks Windows passwords by using LM hashes through rainbow tables. One must have physical access to the machine you wish to get the password from though. You can download a live CD for XP or Vista here So it was that easy...not quite. The security files for the OS were corrupted and Ophcrack kept on coming up with the "Not Found" message for the NT Password. It seems XP keeps a copy of the security files in a folder called "Repair" on the system. Here are the steps I followed to get Ophcrack to determine the admin password from the backup. In Ophcrack click "Load->Encrypted SAM file" and navigate to /mnt/sda1/windows/repair Note: c:\windows\system32\config\sam (windows main copy) c:\