Let me just say I hate dealing with old windows computers, but once in a while you come across a computer that needs some help and Re-Installing Windows is not an option. It has been a rare instance for me and typically I just ended up re-installing but in this particular instance there were just too many machines with some information that was going to be too difficult to replace so I thought to finally find a solution.
After lots of googling I found a site that provides a bootable cd/usb/floppy (yes, floppy) with help of which you can reset or re-enable local user accounts. This is particularly handy when you took a Windows XP machine off the domain and do not know Administrator password or all the passwords were cashed on the server.
So this is what I did, I went to this site: http://pogostick.net/~pnh/ntpasswd/
Downloaded the iso there. Burned it with my Mac and booted into it on the Win Xp box. Then you run thought some fairly straight forward menus and you’re all set.
This tool saved me hours of re-installing! So i hope it’ll help others as well.
