I hate to be a pest;
I've read that if you get rid of the SAM files down in system32\config, there
will be no passwords. Articles have refferred to a SAM.exe file, but all I
found was a SAM.log (or was it sav ?) and a SAM file with no extension at all.
Viewing either gives you the usual hashed up slashed up crap, nothing for the
human eye. Actually I can't even tell if the file is corrupt. Booting from the
new drive with this one as D: I renamed the SAM files and now when I go to
recovery console I don't get a prompt for a password, but after it asks "which"
windows install do I wish to log onto, I tell it #1 and then it gives me a
C:\windows prompt and stops. Doesn't lock up, i.e. caps and nums still respond,
but that ain't for sure, so last time I typed exit, and it did indeed exit.
Now I still have yet another drive loaded for this machine, but it has a bad
error because I put word97 on it and it keeps asking for the XP disk to replace
"outdated" files. I can however get safemode admin on it.
What if I copied the valid SAM files from the one that runs "right" to the
original. Even if I lose all the original accounts, I'll still have drivers,,,,
or will I ??
Is this something you think might work ? I can indeed have all three drives in
there with a CD drive, had it that way before. Just gotta be sure which files
I'm putting where. Is this crazy plan even worth a try ?
There is yet one more thing, I know I'm learning as I go along, but any idea
what I should charge this guy ? I know the nature of what I saved in the way of
files, they are valuable to him. All this instead of him bringing the disks and
simply format C: ! Also he doesn't have the disks so if this last ditch effort
to save the OS doesn't work I'll be DLing drivers.
Also, I Google for those Linux disks, alot of hits come up, but there's all
this runaround. One place is selling them ($195) but this is a utility and
everything on two floppies. I tried P2P, nothing. One site said I needed a
command line decompressor, now this would run in Linux, so not only do I not
know the WINRAR commands, there's very little I know about the syntax in the OS
itself, like how to open the program, just type it like DOS (I hope).
Would the old PKUNZIP run on NTFS ? I think I can remember enough. At this
point, both files named SAM are renamed, I'm thinking about going ahead my the
"crazy" plan, put the working SAM files in. If it doesn't work I can restore
everything to where it was. Back to shuffling harddrives I guess.
Again I am dubious about the odds of success. If you can just replace these SAM
files at will there ain't much security, of course we do actually know that.
The one advantage here though is that all the SAM files were generated on this
particular PC, and the replacement will come from a HD of exactly the same
model. I think it pretty unlikely that I could just walk into anyone's PC with
my own SAM files and take over, or could I ? WOW, what an idea.
At any rate any machine ID stuff in there would be the same.
The only thing that bothers me is that the same condition that caused it to
crash is likely to still be there, a virus or 20, spyware, worms, who knows.
then I'll have to deal witrh that. Lucky me.
As always your comments and suggestions are welcomed and appreciated. Thanks
again.
JURB
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