Admin forgot password

[TiffanyC]

My mom bought my little brother (whos 11 right now) a pc with Windows XP. Unfortunately he password protected his XP after a warning I gave him not to because he will most likely forget it. But regardless of what I said he did it anyway and now he forgot his password and we can't install andything! Is there any way I can get that password or do something to erase all memory and start over with the computer?

[Statica]

Hi
Is your brother the administrator of the system or is he a user with admin priveleges?
Try logging in as the Administrator. If you havent already set a password for administrator (most people dont with XP), it should be a blank password. You can then reset of the person's password. If you need to log in as Administrator - press CTRL+ALT+DEL twice in the welcome screen and log in as Administrator and password.

This is the risk you run by letting people use administrator accounts (if your brother was using 'administrator'). Next time, try:
a) using a 'username' even if you have to assign admin priveleges.
b) Use 'Prevent forgotten wizard' to create a password reset disk. It is available from the Control Panel > User accounts

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_{moderator note: now this thread needs to be closed, for a few obvious reasons, that I hope you understand - we cannot have information about password and system hacking on this board because that would be illegal. While we can understand the frustration of being in such a situation, there is no way for us to distinguish between your situation and someone else posting to get information on how to hack into another computer.}