Win XP guest : forgotten password

[virtualBSB]

Host OSX 10.10.5
Guest Win XP SP2
Problem: XP admin password forgotten
Situation to date:
Have downloaded Ophcrack XP LiveCD iso version 3.6 & burnt it to a CD (having previously tried various other suggested options - all without success)
Set VB boot order to optical disc then hard drive
CD spins up, is noted in Win startup screen then moves on to HD and boots normally
If HD boot option is removed, start up from the CD gives a fatal error.
According to the Ophcrack info, the program should start automatically.

Any suggestions as to how to get Ophcrack to work or another means of killing the XP password. (This was only created after installing VB6.0.10 and setting up "File Manager" that required XP to have a password - this I foolishly did not write down on paper, only noting it in my database that is installed on Win XP!!

[mpack]

That is a Windows XP support question. We here at the VirtualBox forums have no special knowledge of how to defeat Windows security. I.e. the virtualness of the hardware doesn't reduce the secureness of the guest OS.

You may want to review the following website: https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-tips-to ... -password/

[virtualBSB]

update;
the ISO was not properly burnt; now rectified.
Win XP boots with Ophcrack shows first window then displays a text screen then hangs
[attachment=0]Screen Shot 2019-07-30 at 14.05.48.png

[scottgus1]

Did you read Mpack's message? Or are you ignoring it?

[virtualBSB]

I had not seen it until I posted my update. I have since followed his link and will try another program.

However, as a long shot if all else fails, is there any way to extract data files from the vdi file?

[scottgus1]

Yes. You can make another XP guest and attach this guest's virtual drive as a second drive.

[socratis]

Just out of curiosity...

Have downloaded Ophcrack XP LiveCD iso version 3.6 & burnt it to a CD

the ISO was not properly burnt; now rectified.

May I ask why didn't you use the ISO directly, and you went Paris-to-London-via-Tokyo? You could have completely skipped the burning part, simply by mounting the ISO directly:



PS. For the password part, I like Hiren's Boot CD. Just used it last week on a real Win7-64 system (via the YUMI Multiboot USB Creator, a life saver!) to help a friend. She tried to update her computer by taking it to a computer shop and those idiots simply reformatted it, having backed up only the "My Documents" and "Desktop" folders, nothing else!

[virtualBSB]

"May I ask why…you went Paris-to-London-via-Tokyo?"
Given the current politics in the UK I would have got off in Tokyo!

"You could have completely skipped the burning part, simply by mounting the ISO directly:"

Thanks for your info. As this is only the 2nd time that I have used an ISO file (the 1st being to load Linux a few months ago onto my aging Vista run laptop) and the only boot options that I found were 'floppy', 'hard', 'optical', or 'network' looking in System I went (reluctantly) to optical 5I aalready had prepared a USB key to do the job).

In the 11 years that I've been using VB this is the 1st time I've had to go behind the scenes to fix anything. The only other problems that I have had were being stick on VB 4.12 on my Vista host and the loss of networking back in version 3.x when there was a registry conflict that I was never able to exorcise - with each VB update a new network driver entry is made in the registry as the old one cannot be deleted with the result that there are 'at least) 2 addresses for the same thing.

If I still need to crack the XP password I'll try your option.

[virtualBSB]

Yes. You can make another XP guest and attach this guest's virtual drive as a second drive.

This sounds like a v. good solution. I had already created a new VM & loaded Win XP. I read various "how to" posts last night but still do not understand how to attach the existing vdi to the new VM (my eyes were becoming glazed). I was able to make a copy of the original vdi file from within VB just to mitigate for any further accidents.

[mpack]

and the only boot options that I found were 'floppy', 'hard', 'optical', or 'network'

Yes, those are the boot options for any PC you'll ever meet (that plus USB which VirtualBox can't boot from).

That has nothing to do with how those hardware features are implemented virtually in VirtualBox. An ISO file is an image of a CD/DVD, so VirtualBox can treat it as virtual optical, just like it can treat other kinds of files as virtual drives. You add a virtual CD drive to the VM, and then it can be associated with: nothing (empty drive), with an ISO file, or with a host drive. The latter is usually noisy, slow and error prone so it's very much a last resort.

[MontyMan]

Dear BSB,

In order to retrieve information from your file, you should be able to attach the VDI as an additional storage drive in the second VM you've created; see this section of the manual:

https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch03. ... gs-storage

HTH
Monty.

[virtualBSB]

I have certainly learnt more about the virtual world, be it machines, drives etc. however, mounting the existing vdi file in a new vm produced what I rather expected, a request for my Win XP password! The only way I could see circumventing this would be if there was a vdi de-compiler: I'm not optimistic.

[scottgus1]

The password request isn't in the VDI, it's in the OS in the VDI. Attaching as a second drive in another XP guest, with XP installed and bootable, would allow you to boot the new XP guest then access the second drive and get files off.

mounting the existing vdi file in a new vm produced what I rather expected, a request for my Win XP password!

This would mean you booted from the password-protected OS in the new guest. You need one drive in the new guest with a fresh XP installed on it, where you can get to the XP desktop without being locked out. Then you attach the disk from the old password-protected guest as the second drive in the new guest. Boot into the new guest and access the old drive's data.

[MontyMan]

What Scott said. In fact, unless you used encryption in the file area containing the file you're trying to access, you could probably mount it with a Linux VM. Just connect it as automount, start the VM, browse, and retrieve the file containing the lost password.

[scottgus1]

retrieve the file containing the lost password

This probably won't work. Though the password (hashed, most likely) is there in the files on the VDI somewhere, you won't be able to get it by mounting in another guest. When I had to crack an XP password once a long time ago, the program I used (on the old Ultimate Boot CD, if I remember right) only provided the option of deleting the password, not recovering it.

Adding to another guest as a second drive is for getting data files off, which files you'd use in another guest or transfer to the host.

If you're really after getting through the original guest's password, you need to boot the original password-protected guest with a bootable password-cracking ISO such as the several suggested above.