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How to Reset Forgotten Windows Password with Ultimate Boot CD (UBCD)

January 15th, 2015 by Admin

In this tutorial we’ll show you how to crack and reset Windows password when you forget it or want to unlock a computer with an unknown password. There are tons of recovery tools available to bypass password, but here I’ll use the freeware Ultimate Boot CD (UBCD).

Ultimate Boot CD is a Linux-based bootable disc with loads of useful software for repairing or fixing almost any Windows problem. The built-in chntpw utility could be used to wipe windows passwords and view/edit the registry. Here’s how.

Note: Ultimate Boot CD is a freeware so don’t expect it to work with domain controllers. If you want to find a more powerful yet easy-to-use password recovery software, try the PCUnlocker Live CD.

How to Reset Forgotten Windows Password with Ultimate Boot CD?

Before getting started, you need to download the Ultimate Boot CD (about 588Mb) from its official website, and then burn it to a CD. With the CD you can follow the steps below to reset forgotten Windows 8/7/Vista/XP password:

  1. Boot your locked computer from Ultimate Boot CD. On the boot menu of Ultimate Boot CD, choose Parted Magic and press Enter.

    ultimate-boot-cd

  2. The next screen you have to select your graphic settings. Just select option 1 and press Enter to use the default settings.

    parted-magic

  3. Once you are presented with the Parted Magic desktop, go to the left bottom corner of the screen and choose System Tools -> Change Windows Password.

    change-windows-password

  4. A new small window will open. It lists all Windows partitions detected on your local hard drive. Click on the correct drive and it will start the chntpw utility in the console.

    select-windows-installation

  5. You will now be presented with the chntpw Main Interactive Menu. Type 1 and press Enter.

    chntpw

  6. This will list out all of the Windows users on the system. Type the name of your desired user and press Enter.

    enter-username

  7. You will now be given the option to blank out the password, as well as several other ways to promote or unlock the user account. Type 1 and press Enter, it will remove the existing password.

    user-edit-menu

  8. If you don’t want to reset other user password, type ! and press Enter.

    quit-edit-menu

  9. Type q and hit Enter at this point to quit the User Edit Menu.

    quit-chntpw

  10. You will then be asked to write the registry hive to disk. Type y to confirm and save your changes.

    write-hive-files

  11. Now you can reboot, and you can log into your Windows account with a blank password. Once you’re logged in, you can go to the Control Panel to change your password to something else — something you can remember.

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Posted in Free Software, Tips & Tricks, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Vista, Windows XP

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Download PVSCSI Driver for VMware Paravirtual SCSI

November 25th, 2014 by Admin

When VMware released ESXi 4.0, they officially supported booting your OS drive from a paravirtual SCSI controller. Comparing to BusLogic and LSI Logic, Paravirtual SCSI (PVSCSI) controllers are high-performance storage controllers that can result in greater throughput and lower CPU utilization. However, since Windows doesn’t have native driver for the VMware PVSCSI adapter, you will find that a paravirtualized hard disk can’t be recognized during Windows installation or booting from WinPE.

To fix this problem you need to grab the pvscsi driver and add it to your WinPE bootdisk, or load the driver on the fly. But it’s not easy to extract pvscsi boot floppy images from VMware ESXi. Lucikly I came across a floppy disk image called pvscsi_windows2008.flp under my VMware Workstation installation directory: C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Workstation\Resources.

For your convenience, we load the pvscsi-Windows2008.flp image in our virtual floppy drive and then archive the setup files in both .iso and .zip formats. Below you can download pvscsi driver for VMware Paravirtual SCSI in different formats:

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Microsoft Tool to Download Windows 8.1 ISO and Create Installation Media

November 12th, 2014 by Admin

Ready to install or reinstall Windows 8.1 but you don’t have a installation disc? In the past, it’s quite difficult to grab a copy of Windows setup ISO image, even if you have a genuine product key at hand. And now, thanks to a new online tool from Microsoft – Windows Installation Media Creating Tool, which lets you to download Windows 8.1 ISO image and create a installation media right away.

To download and create a bootable CD or USB flash drive with the Windows 8.1 installation files, please follow the steps below:

  1. Head over to Microsoft’s installation tool webpage, and then click the Create media button to download Windows Installation Media Creation Tool (about 1.26 Mb).
  2. Once the file finishes downloading, double-click it to launch the Windows Installation Media Creation Tool. Connect your USB flash drive (at least 4 GB of space should be available) or insert a blank DVD.
  3. This program allows you to select your desired language, Windows 8.1 edition and system architecture (32-bit or 64-bit). As far as editions are concerned, you can get Windows 8.1, Windows 8.1 Pro, the N versions of both operating systems, or a single language Windows 8.1 version.

    media-creation-tool

  4. After clicking the Next button, you’ll be presented with two options to save the installation file: create a Windows 8.1 installation USB drive or save the setup ISO image for later user. If you don’t have a USB drive at hand, you should select the 2nd option to save the installation ISO image on your PC which can then be burned to a DVD.

    save-windows-installation

  5. Click Next to download or create the install media. This will take a while depending on the speed of your Internet connection and Windows 8.1 edition that you’re downloading.

    download-installation-file

    Once this is done, you can use the USB flash drive to perform a clean install of Windows 8.1 right away, or burn the ISO image to CD/USB with the freeware ISO2Disc.

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Posted in Free Software, Tips & Tricks, Windows 8

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How to Take Screenshots with Freeware Greenshot

October 22nd, 2014 by Admin

There are many programs available for taking screenshots. If you’re looking for a free option, Greenshot is is an excellent and open source screenshot tool for Microsoft Windows. It is free for both personal and commercial use. It’s much easier for a beginner to use than some paid screenshot tools. Here’s how to install Greenshot and use it to take screenshots in Windows 7.

How to Take Screenshots with Freeware Greenshot?

You can grab a free copy of Greenshot from its official website. Compatible with all Windows versions, the downloaded file is sized at nearly 1.3Mb. Double-click the setup file you have downloaded to install it on your computer.

After installation, right-click on the Greenshot icon in the system tray to access the Greenshot menu. Using this menu, you can take different types of screenshots, open an image in the Greenshot editor, set Preferences, and perform several other useful tasks.

capture-window

As an example, we’re going to take a screenshot of the Skype application. Simple select the Capture window from the Greenshot menu, and you can then pick the Skype window to capture with a single click.

skype

Thankfully, Greenshot also provides a list of keyboard shortcuts that making the jobs easier. If you need to take a screenshot for an active window, simply press the Alt + PrntScr hotkey. While pressing Ctrl + PrntScr you can capture the full screen.

greenshot

Once a screenshot has been captured, a popup menu will display asking what you want to do with the screenshot. We can choose to save it to a folder, or open it in Greenshot’s image editor to add some enhancements to it.

Conclusion

Greenshot may not be the best screenshot-taking program. But it handles most basic screen capture needs easily. If you don’t need to capture video and don’t mind editing captures in another program, it does everything you are likely to need. In fact, Greenshot has become my screen capture program of choice.

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Posted in Free Software, Software Reviews, Tips & Tricks, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Vista, Windows XP

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How to Disable Malware Protection in Firefox

September 29th, 2014 by Admin

Firefox 32 integrates Google’s Safe Browsing API with a safe browsing blocklist that identifies potentially malicious executables downloaded by the user. However, the browser is never capable of detecting malicious files successfully. Today when I try to download the freeware fgdump, Firefox keeps blocking it from being downloaded and says “Blocked: May contain a virus or spyware“.

firfox-block-download

Eventually I find a way to disable the malware protection in Firefox, and I can then download fgdump without any issue.

How to Disable Malware Protection in Firefox?

  1. In Firefox, open a new tab, then type about:config in the address bar and press Enter. Click the button promising to be careful.
  2. In the search box above the list, type or paste browser.safebrowsing.malware.enabled and press Enter.
  3. Double-click the browser.safebrowsing.malware.enabled preference. It should switch from true to false and regular type to bold.disable-safebrowsing

Basically, what I would like to do is turn off just the malware protection feature, but leave the other safe-browsing features enabled. If you want to disable all safe-browsing features completely, use the same method above the set browser.safebrowsing.enabled to false.

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How to Reset Forgotten Syskey / Startup Password with Freeware

July 31st, 2014 by Admin

Forgot the syskey startup password and can’t boot up your system? In my previous post, I outlined how to lock your computer with syskey. SysKey is a little-known feature of Windows that allows users to lock out access to the Security Accounts Manager (SAM) registry hive so that login credentials cannot be cracked. The problem is, unlike BIOS password or Windows account password, there is no reliable way to get around the syskey startup password.

syskey

In the event of losing a syskey password, you can restore your computer back to an earlier point without syskey enabled. If there is no any restore point on the machine, the last resort is to try this freeware – Offline NT Password & Registry Editor, which can help you reset lost syskey startup password on Windows XP.

Note: This software is without any warranty. Please take at your own risk. It will not work on Windows 8, 7, Vista, or any higher version than Window XP. (Using it on Vista or windows 7 will cause a continuous reboot loop.)

How to Reset Forgotten Syskey / Startup Password?

  1. Download the CD image of Offline NT Password & Registry Editor from its official website and burn it to a blank CD.
  2. Boot your affected computer from the CD that you created. You may have to go into the BIOS settings to change the boot order to set CD/DVD as the first boot device.
  3. The boot CD will take you to the command prompt. The first thing you need to do is select your system partition:

    select-partition

  4. With the system partition selected, the utility then prompts you to specify the registry directory to edit. The default is fine, so hit Enter.

    registry-path

  5. Next you can choose whether to use password reset or some other thing, so just hit Enter for password reset.

    load-sam

  6. Next you’ll be prompted whether you want to edit user passwords or change syskey. You want to reset syskey startup password, so type 2 and hit Enter.

    reset-syskey

  7. Type y and press Enter to confirm the syskey disable.

    disable-syskey

  8. Once it’s done, type q to quit and hit Enter again.

    exit-chtnpw

  9. Type y to save your changes to disk. At this point you can reboot your computer.

    write-changes

As you can see, with Offline NT Password & Registry Editor you’re able to reset forgotten syskey startup password in minutes. However, the utility can just as easily destroy a Windows system’s data. For that reason, the tool should only be used as a last resort.

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Offline Change Windows Password with Trinity Rescue Kit

April 10th, 2014 by Admin

How to change Windows password after you’ve forgotten your password? You can easily change the password of any user account from the Control Panel with admin privileges. However, if you’re locked out of your computer, you need to use a boot CD to change the account password offline.

Trinity Rescue Kit (TRK) is a free live Linux CD that aims specifically at recovery and repair operations on Windows machines. It has integrated the chntpw tool which allows you to edit / change a Windows user password offline. In this tutorial we’ll show you how to change Windows password offline with Trinity Rescue Kit.

Note: TRK is a command-line utility which doesn’t come with a GUI interface. If you’re not a Linux geek, I would recommend you to use the PCUnlocker Live CD which is a Windows PE bootdisk with graphical interface.

Offline Change Windows Password with Trinity Rescue Kit

  1. Download the ISO image of Trinity Rescue Kit and burn it to your CD. After you have burned a disc, place it in the CD/DVD drive of your locked computer and get the machine to boot from Trinity Rescue CD.
  2. When TRK loads you get a list of tasks TRK can perform. Navigate down to the 4th option (Windows Password Resetting) using the arrow keys and press Enter once it is highlighted.

    Windows-Password-Resetting

  3. Once you select that option, you get a list of ways you can select to reset your lost password. Here we select the Winpass prompts for username first option (Winpass is actually just an automated script for the chntpw tool). TRK will ask you the username whose password you want to reset.

    Winpass-prompts-for-username

  4. At this point, TRK will search your hard drive for all currently Windows installations and list them. You’ll need to select the relevant installation here. If you have only one OS installed, then merely press 1 and hit Enter.
  5. Now, at the final stage, you will get yet another list of options. Here, choose the “Edit (set new) user password” option. Press 2 to change your Windows password offline.

    chntpw-change-windows-password

  6. Now reject the TRK CD and restart the computer. You can log on to Windows with your new password!

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Posted in Free Software, Tips & Tricks, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP

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How to Recover Windows Password with Cain & Abel

February 13th, 2014 by Admin

There are chances that you might get locked out of your computer because of forgotten the administrator password. So you then need to find some programs to crack / recover your password. As far as password recovery utilities go, Cain & Abel is by far one of the best freeware out there. This tutorial will walk through recovering Windows 7/Vista/XP password with Cain & Abel.

How to Recover Windows Password with Cain & Abel?

Forgot your administrator password and can’t log in? Cain & Abel needs to be installed, so you must have another working computer to recover your password. First of all, remove the hard drive from your locked machine and then attach it to a working computer as a secondary drive. Then follow these steps to recover Windows password:

  1. Visit the Cain & Abel website and download the Windows NT/2000/XP version of the program. Install the program on your computer. During installation, you’ll also be prompted to install WinPcap, which is fine.
  2. Click on the “Tools” menu and select “Syskey Decoder”. On the Syskey Decoder dialog, click on the “…” button to locate the SYSTEM file of your locked Windows installation. By default, the SYSTEM file is located in C:\Windows\System32\Config. The program will immediately display the decoded boot key which is required for cracking your Windows password.

    decode-syskey

  3. Click on the “Cracker” tab. On the left, click on the “LM & NTLM Hashes” and then click the big blue plus sign on the Cain toolbar. Make sure the “Import Hashes from a SAM database” button is checked. Choose the SAM file of your locked Windows installation and enter the boot key that you’ve got in the step above.

    import-hashes-from-sam

  4. Click Next. All the user accounts will be loaded to the right. Right-click on the user account you need the password for, choose Brute-Force Attack -> NTLM Hashes.
    Cain-Abel-NTLM

  5. Now check predefined under charset and select the suitable dictionary to use and click start.

    brute-force-attack

    That’s it! Just wait for Cain & Abel to recover the password!

If you have no way of getting the SAM and SYSTEM files from your Windows PC, you will not be able to use Cain & Abel to recover your password. If you have no luck with Cain & Abel, I recommend you to use PCUnlocker Live CD which can remove your forgotten Windows password instantly.

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Posted in Free Software, Others, Tips & Tricks, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP

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How to Hack Windows XP Password with DreamPackPL

August 3rd, 2013 by Admin

What to do if you forgot Windows XP password? The easiest way is boot your computer from PCUnlocker Live CD and it can help you remove forgotten Windows XP password instantly. In this tutorial we’ll show you another method which could be used to hack into Windows XP computer without changing the password or recovering the original password on your computer.

DreamPackPL allows any user to bypass Windows login security and logon to Windows XP or Windows 2000 computer even though the user have forgotten or lost the valid password, and without the need to reset, recover or change the existing passwords that are currently set with the accounts. DreamPackPL (version 2oo4.o6.1o) is actually built on DreamPack which consists only the hacked and patched sfcfiles.dll.

How to Hack Windows XP Password with DreamPackPL?

  1. Get physical access to the machine. Remember that it must have a CD or DVD drive.
  2. Download DreamPackPL from this link. Unzip the downloaded dpl.zip and you’ll get dpl.ISO.
  3. Burn or write the ISO image to CD using ISO2Disc.
  4. After you have the disk, boot from the CD or DVD drive. You will see Windows 2000 Setup and it will load some files.
  5. Press “R” to install DreamPackPL.
  6. Press “C” to install DreamPackPL by using the recovery console.
  7. Select the Windows installation that is currently on the computer (Normally is “1” if you only have one Windows installed)
  8. Backup your original sfcfiles.dll by typing: “ren C:\Windows\System32\sfcfiles.dll sfcfiles.lld” (without quotes)
  9. Copy the hacked file from CD to system32 folder. Type: “copy D:\i386\pinball.ex_ C:\Windows\System32\sfcfiles.dll” (without quotes and assuming your CD drive is D:)
  10. Type “exit”, take out disk and reboot.
  11. In the password field, type “dreamon” (without quotes) and DreamPack menu will appear.
  12. Click the top gray graphic in the DreamPack window and you will get a menu popup.

    dreampackpl

  13. Go to commands and enable the options and enable the god command.
  14. Type “god” in the password field to get in Windows.

You can also go to the DreamPackPL Passwords menu and select “Logon with wrong password and hash”. This option allows you to login with ANY password instead of using god everytime.

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Posted in Free Software, Tips & Tricks, Windows XP

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How to Decompress A ZIP/RAR File with 7-Zip

August 1st, 2013 by Admin

Compressed files take up less storage space and can be transferred to other computers more quickly than uncompressed files. In this article we’ll show you how to decompress a .zip or .rar file with 7-Zip program.

How to Decompress A ZIP/RAR File with 7-Zip?

Here we’ll use the PCUnlocker program for demonstration purpose. PCUnlocker is the most popular Windows password recovery software, which comes as a bootable ISO image file and it is distributed as a .zip format. Now we’re going to decompress the PCUnlockerStd.zip file, which is the download file of PCUnlocker Standard.

Step #1: Go to the website http://www.7-zip.org/ and click on the Download link. Wait for the screen to load and click on Save File. Once downloaded, double-click on the file and follow the instructions to install it.

Step #2:Now simply right-click the PCUnlockerStd.zip file. Go to 7-Zip and select Extract files from the context menu.

7zip

Step #3:In the Extract dialog box, you can specify where you would like to extract the given files to. Click OK.

7zip-extract

Step #4:The files will be extracted into a new folder that contains all the content.

extracted-files

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