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In search of ... a universal password reset/retrieval system

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MilesAhead:
I think this article is aimed more at recovering or overwriting the Admin password.  But some of the tools also work on non-Windows OS.

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/toolsofthetrade/tp/passrecovery.htm

barney:
He-he-he  ;D.  I do something quite similar to generate my own passwords.  Use a thing called Key Maker ... every password is unique for the phrase I enter, and even if you knew my penchant for phrases, you'd be highly unlikely to guess the prefix/suffix I add.  It's not the strongest generator around, but it's more than adequate for most of my usage, and a dictionary crack is well nigh impossible unless you happen to have a few Crays around  :-\.

However, it doesn't detect passwords, and that's what I'm after.  Seems every time I turn around, I see another retriever for MS Office nnnn or Windows nn.  Usually presented as the ultimate retriever/reset.  But a lot of programs want passwords that none of the crackers I've encountered will even begin to approach.

It's kinda like the Giveaway of the Day stuff.  I quit frequenting the site because any crash or any reinstall will wipe out your access to your dividend(s) from that site.  Oh, it can be done, but the time and effort are seldom worth it.  But, given a decent tracking system and a functional cracker, that would not be a major issue.

And, while their are some pretty decent recovery tools for non-Windows OSes - mostly Linux derivatives, don't know about Mac stuff - there doesn't seem to be anything extant for Windows non-MS progs.  OphCrack is probably the best I've used, or maybe SIW, but neither will tell me the MySQL password, for instance, nor the InfoSelect password used to encrypt an element, nor ... you get the picture, I'm certain.

Generally, all these things can be found, barring catastrophic failure, but if you're using a program you installed a decade ago, you prolly don't recall the password used to install/run it.  So moving it to a different hard drive, under Windows, can be problematic, to say the least.  Granted, some apps use a hardware footprint, so they cannot be easily moved from one machine to another.  But for the ones that simply require a password, there's very little that I've found that can be of help.

This is not [for me] a pressing need, but I'm amazed, considering the width and breadth of talent on the Internet, that this has not been done - or at least approached, with requests for beta testing, RFC, etc.



The point here is to be able to recover a broken system and reinstall all that was there before.  Yeah, a decent imaging app would pretty much obviate that problem, but how many casual users do you know who even begin to think about disk/system images, much less keeping such an image updated :huh:?

barney:
@Miles Ahead
Thanks for the reminder.  I had that bookmarked several crashes agone, but had forgotten it.  'Tis very useful, or at least 'twas in the past.  Kudos, sir :Thmbsup: :Thmbsup: :Thmbsup:.

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