>> I'm sure if you knew enough about Linux, you could do this kind of thing
>> pretty easily. I don't have the knowledge required.
> 
> That's a far cry from "doesn't appear to be documented".

...and why do you think I don't have the knowledge required?

Maybe because I couldn't find it documented anywhere? ;-)

>> I *have* such a thing. It's a little Linux boot disk that allows you to
>> access an NTFS partition and rewrite the SAM DB. [The thing that stores
>> the local administrator password.] Very damn useful too! ;-)
> 
> Yep.  I've got a copy of that one around here somewhere as well from my 
> days working on Win2K Server.  Pity it didn't work on the domain 
> controller I was having problems with, though - W2Ks had a problem where 
> if the administrator password got corrupted (that's the best guess 
> Microsoft had about the issue), you couldn't even boot into safe mode.  
> The utility disk at the time didn't understand AD DCs (indeed, since it 
> was a DC, it wasn't the SAM but the AD database that needed to be 
> accessed, and it wasn't designed for that).

Yeah, AD works completely differently to the SAM - even down to using a 
different hash function IIRC. Good luck with that! [Time for an 
authoritative restore - oh, wait, it doesn't boot! OK, time for a 
parallel install to set up the backup software to restore the original 
data over the top of the boot partition. Yes, I have personally done 
this. No, it isn't amusing.]

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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