Using TRK To Enable Vista SP1 Administrator Account And Reset Windows Password

If you lose or forget the Windows password, can you regain Windows account login? The answer is certainly yes (and there is not only one route to the Rome).
Take Windows Vista for example, the OS built in with a function calls “Create Password Reset Disk”. However, the question is how many of you bother to create one of this disk? Another problem of Windows Password Reset Disk is being unique to an account (good from security point of view).

That’s to say, even if you create a Windows Password Reset Disk for account A of Windows machine A, you cannot use it to reset account B of Windows machine A. In addition, what if the password reset disk corrupted?

If you wake up in such a bad day that you forget the password and there is NO Windows password reset disk, Trinity Rescue Kit may be able to get you back to luck.

Trinity Rescue Kit (TRK) is a Live CD running Linux kernel; with an ISO image size at about 130MB; bootable from USB drive, CD/DVD, or over network from PXE.

The TRK owner, Tom Kerremans (a.k.a. Harakiri), creates a shell script calls winpass to automatically search and mount NTFS file system followed by calling chntpw to edit SAM file in %windir%\system32\config.

The magic is the chntpw (Offline NT Password & Registry Editor) that enable or unlock a Windows account (be it the real Vista SP1 Administrator account) and reset the Windows password to blank or new password.

How to use Trinity Rescue Kit (TRK) to unlock Vista SP1 hidden Administrator account and reset the forgotten password to blank?

Linux OS is case-sensitive, i.e. Linux doesn’t agree “walker” and “Walker” are the same string. TRK is based on Linux kernel. Thus, please be reminded it’s also case-sensitive!



1) Download TRK from the genuine TrinityHome.org. In my “video-shot”, the latest Trinity Rescue Kit 3.3 build 321 is used (file name: trinity-rescue-kit.3.3-build-321.iso, MD5 checksum: 128abbe0a4b4d863d08bd10263f90755).

2) Burn the ISO image file to CD/DVD-ROM and boots it up (the easier way to boot up TRK). While the TRK boot menu appears, you have about 10 seconds to choose one of the boot options or just let it boots up with default option (recommended).

3) After the Linux boot processes complete, you should see the Linux command prompt appears. You’re ready to execute winpass shell script to start searching local hard disk for Windows NTFS file systems with Windows installation folder (%windir%). Unless it’s dual-boot machine, there is only 1 search result – enter 1 and press ENTER or just press ENTER to accept the default answer:

^{Type winpass to start searching Windows NTFS file system with Windows installation directory.}

When executing winpass without option switch, the default action of chntpw is to deal with Administrator account. To deal with particular Windows account, e.g. Walker, type

winpass -u Walker

Next, multiple lines of text scroll up. Take note of a section call SAM Policy Limits:

^{Vet through the winpass digest of SAM file and check is the Vista SP1 hidden Administrator account is currently locked or disabled.}

If the Vista SP1 hidden Administrator account is locked/disabled (i.e. the dis/lock keyword appears in “Locked?” column), choose option 4 to “unlock and enable user account”:

^{Use TRK winpass shell script to unlock or enabled the ultimate Vista SP1 Administrator account.}

When the “Unlocked!” keyword is seen, it indicates the Administrator account is successfully unlocked/enabled. Finally, execute winpass again and choose option 1 to reset the Administrator password to blank (doesn’t matter it’s actually blank or you’ve forgotten it).

That’s all to get the job done. Good luck!

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