Bad XP problem

From: JURB6006 (jurb6006_at_aol.com)
Date: 08/24/04 

Date: 24 Aug 2004 01:55:49 GMT

This has to do with a lost admin password in XP. The PC won't boot, it locks
before even running GUI. There are alot of important files in a private folder,
stuff the guy would pay money to recover. Without the admin PW we can't repair
the OS with the XP CD, and we were the ones who put it in. It's possible that
the SAM files are corrupt.

I wasn't that confident that anything would work, but I've tried installing a
fresh boot HD and loading it fresh with XP, cloning the drive and then letting
XP install over itself, but loading from either it won't give me access to the
protected files for the owner's account. We know the PW for that account, but
the admin, when you go into safe mode, well I PW protected that as well. (few
people know you can do that)

I've read that the NTFS doesn't help either, and when I go to access that
directory it gives a MB beep. Doesn't sound promising.

Could I possible copy the SAM files to the clone, which boots ? Then I could
maybe use the original login. Another possiblility would be a registry merge.
Do you think any of this might work, or am I just fucked ?

FYI, the PC is : P4 2600HT on an Asus MB with 512MB and 2 80GB Maxtors, a
Plextor DVD burner and a region/authentication free DVDROM, authentic ATI
Radeon 7500 (64MB) w/TV tuner and vid and SVID outputs. The Asus has onboard
netcard and Ali sound. Once it's up and running I'm adding a Firewire card,
which is one of the few things other than RAID which this MB lacks. Even so,
there's about $1000 tied up in this box, about a year ago. It might be worth
saving. :)

Thanks in advance for any help.

JURB