Had some fun hacking on my own pc this evening. I decided to try and get my XP partition back on one of my W2k Servers. When I installed w2k on the box (after xp had been on there) it destroyed the Master Boot Record and I was unable to get into XP. Unfortunately in order to get into the recovery console (by booting off the xp cd) I needed the “administrator” password (I only ever remember logging on as my user so for whatever reason I did not know/could not remember the admin password).
A quick google search later and I had found NTPasswd to change the administrator password. I did this, rebooted and it still wouldn’t let me into the box. I then tried again and changed the administrators password and my own user password. Rebooted back off the XP CD, entered the new password and I was back into the recovery console.
Then ran Fixboot, attrib -hsa on ntldr,ntdetect.com, copied these files to another name (for safekeeping) and then copied these files off the i386 directory on the XP CD back onto what Microsoft call the system partition (where boot.ini is stored). A quick reboot and it still didn’t work. This was because w2k/myself had messed the order of the partitions on the disk, so xp was no longer in the same number partition. A quick copy/paste of the lines for XP, changing the partition number on each line and a trial and error selection of the alternatives and I was in……almost.
For some reason XP would not take the new password for my user. A quick change into administrator and using the new password meant I could then change the password for my user, log back in and everything is ok! Phew!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hope that helps someone! (thanks to Windows Annoyances for the guidance!)