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Forgot the Administrator's
Password? - Reset Domain Admin Password in
Windows 2000 AD
Note:
In
order to successfully use this trick you must
first use one of the password resetting tools
available on the
Forgot the Administrator's Password? page.
The reason for
that is that you need to have the local
administrator's password in order to perform the
following tip, and if you don't have it, then
the only method of resetting it is by using the
above tool.
Read more about
that on the
Forgot the Administrator's Password? page.
Update: You can also
discuss these topics on the dedicated
Petri.co.il Forgot Admin Password Forum.
Lamer note:
This procedure is NOT designed for Windows XP,
nor will it work on Windows Server 2003. For
that you should read the
Forgot the Administrator's Password? - Change
Domain Admin Password in Windows Server 2003 AD
page.
Reader John Simpson added his own personal note
regarding the changing of Domain Admin passwords
on Windows NT domains and Windows 2000 Active
Directory domains (HERE ).
I will quote parts of it (thanks John!):
As stated above, the very useful
"Offline NT Password & Registry Editor boot disk" will only let you reset
the password for the MACHINE Administrator account, not the DOMAIN
Administrator account. As you probably know, on a Windows 2000 server which
is an Active Directory controller, you CANNOT log into any machine-level
account. Which means that resetting the MACHINE Administrator password is
pretty much useless.
Or so it would seem. It turns out
that "Directory Service Recovery Mode" uses the MACHINE-level accounts,
since the whole point of this mode is that the AD control databases may be
corrupted and you need a way to manually edit them (presumably using some
high-priced third-party software package...)
I (John Simpson - DP) was able to
reset the password on the DOMAIN Administrator account using the following
procedure:
-
Use the Offline NT Password &
Registry Editor disk to reset the MACHINE Administrator password to "no
password".
-
Reboot, hit F8, and enter
"Directory Service Recovery Mode". The machine will boot up as a standalone
server without any Active Directory support.
-
When the login screen appears,
hit CTRL-ALT-DEL and log in as "Administrator" with no password. This is the
MACHINE Administrator account, and does not have the ability to modify
anything specific involving the Active Directory information, although it
can backup and restore the physical files which contain the AD databases.
-
Run "REGEDIT.EXE"
(without the quotes). Navigate to
HKEY_USERS\.Default\Control
Panel\Desktop
Lamer note:
Make sure you write down the default values BEFORE changing them. You could
also just PRINT SCREEN your registry editor display. The best option is to
just backup the values to a .REG file by selecting the DESKTOP key and then
selecting EXPORT from the FILE menu.
After you made
sure you know what the default values are, change the following values:
SCRNSAVE.EXE - change from
logon.scr to cmd.exe
ScreenSaveTimeout
- change
from 900 to 15
ScreenSaveActive - change to 1 (if it wasn't 1 already)
-
Reboot normally. When the box
appears asking you to hit CTRL-ALT-DEL to log in, just wait.
After 15-30 seconds you will see
a command prompt appear (since that is the screensaver).
-
In the command prompt, type the
following command:
MMC DSA.MSC
Lamer note:
There is a space character between the "mmc" and the "dsa.msc". Also,
note that the DSA.MSC file is usually located in the SYSTEM32 subfolder
of your WINDOWS or WINNT folder.
More lamer
notes: DSA.MSC is actually the executable name for Active Directory
Users and Computers, which in turn is the main tool for managing users,
groups and computers in Windows 2000 Active Directory.
This should bring up the
management console where you can edit users' passwords, including the
password for the Administrator account.
-
After resetting the Administrator
password, exit the management console and type the command EXIT in the
command prompt window.
-
Hit CTRL-ALT-DEL and log into the
DOMAIN Administrator account using the new password!
Don't forget to undo the changes
you made to the registry (see step #4, lamer note), or you will always have a command prompt with
Domain Administrator rights appear whenever somebody logs out.
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