Two options: Download Offline NT Password & Registry Editor (v080526 - May 2008)
Petter Nordahl-Hagen has written a Windows NT/2000/XP/Vista offline password editor: home.eunet.no/pnordahl/ntpasswd/
* This is a utility to (re)set the password of any user that has a valid (local) account on your Windows NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista system, by modifying the encrypted password in the registry's SAM file.
* You do not need to know the old password to set a new one.
* It works offline, that is, you have to shutdown your computer and boot off a floppy disk or CD. The boot-disk includes stuff to access NTFS partitions and scripts to glue the whole thing together.
* Works with syskey (no need to turn it off, but you can if you have lost the key)
* Will detect and offer to unlock locked or disabled out user accounts!
Caution: If used on users that have EFS encrypted files, and the system is XP or later service packs on W2K, all encrypted files for that user will be UNREADABLE! and cannot be recovered unless you remember the old password again! Download links:
* cd080802.zip (~3MB) - Bootable CD image
* cd080526.zip (~3MB) - Previous release, Bootable CD image
* bd080526.zip (~1.4M) - Bootdisk image
* drivers1-080526.zip (~310K) - Disk drivers (mostly PATA/SATA)
* drivers2-080526.zip (~1.2M) - Disk drivers (mostly SCSI)
To write these images to a floppy disk you'll need RawWrite2 which is included in the Bootdisk image download. To create the CD you just need to use your favorite CD burning program and burn the .ISO file to CD.
Other option:
Vista will display the logon screen in case there are multiple user accounts or if the single
user has set up a password. Of course that the simplest way to circumvent the Windows Vista logon screen, if you own the only user account on your machine, is to do without the password. This will cause the operating system to not display a logon screen during start up. A single user with no password will be automatically logged on.
But if you share your machine with other users then you might also want to have Windows Vista directly logon into your account, or one of the accounts. There are of course various reasons for doing this. If you find yourself hugging the machine while the other users rarely use it, then you might want to skip the logon screen.
Additionally, even if you are the sole users, you still might have set up a password just to have access to added functionality like remote connections. You wouldn't be able to connect remotely to a Windows Vista account that is not password protected.
Anyway, if you were expecting a hack I have to disappoint you. This is nothing more than simple account management. You will have to click the Start sphere, then enter “cmd” in the search box. In the Command Prompt window write “control userpasswords2” and hit enter.
Windows Vista will now ask you to elevate the privileges of the process so do it and you will be face to face with a window for User Accounts. Toward the top you will be able to see the option “users must enter a username and password to use this computer.” Select the account you wish to alter and then uncheck the option. You will then be prompted with an Automatically Log On window, in which you will have to enter your name and password.