Change or Reset Windows Password from a Ubuntu Live CD

If you can’t log in even after trying your twelve passwords, or you’ve inherited a computer complete with password-protected profiles, worry not – you don’t have to do a fresh install of Windows. We’ll show you how to change or reset your Windows password from a Ubuntu Live CD.
This method works for all of the NT-based version of Windows – anything from Windows 2000 and later, basically. And yes, that includes Windows 7.
Note: If you have files on your hard disk encrypted using built-in Windows encryption, they may not be available after changing the Windows password using this method. Exercise caution if you have important encrypted files.
You’ll need a Ubuntu 9.10 Live CD, or a bootable Ubuntu 9.10 Flash Drive. If you don’t have one, or have forgotten how to boot from the flash drive, check out our article on creating a bootable Ubuntu 9.10 flash drive.
The program that lets us manipulate Windows passwords is calledchntpw. The steps to install it are different in 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Ubuntu.

Installation: 32-bit
Open up Synaptic Package Manager by clicking on System at the top of the screen, expanding the Administration section, and clicking on Synaptic Package Manager.

chntpw is found in the universe repository. Repositories are a way for Ubuntu to group software together so that users are able to choose if they want to use only completely open source software maintained by Ubuntu developers, or branch out and use software with different licenses and maintainers.
To enable software from the universe repository, click on Settings > Repositories in the Synaptic window.

Add a checkmark beside the box labeled “Community-maintained Open Source software (universe)” and then click close.

 When you change the repositories you are selecting software from, you have to reload the list of available software. In the main Synaptic window, click on the Reload button.

The software lists will be downloaded.

Once downloaded, Synaptic must rebuild its search index. The label over the text field by the Search button will read “Rebuilding search index.” When it reads “Quick search,” type chntpw in the text field. The package will show up in the list.

Click on the checkbox near the chntpw name. Click on Mark for Installation.

chntpw won’t actually be installed until you apply the changes you’ve made, so click on the Apply button in the Synaptic window now.

You will be prompted to accept the changes. Click Apply.

The changes should be applied quickly. When they’re done, click Close.

chntpw is now installed! You can close Synaptic Package Manager. Skip to the section titled Using chntpw to reset your password.


Installation: 64-bit
The version of chntpw available in Ubuntu’s universe repository will not work properly on a 64-bit machine. Fortunately, a patched version exists in Debian’s Unstable branch, so let’s download it from there and install it manually.
Open Firefox. Whether it’s your preferred browser or not, it’s very readily accessible in the Ubuntu Live CD environment, so it will be the easiest to use. There’s a shortcut to Firefox in the top panel.

Navigate tohttp://packages.debian.org/sid/amd64/chntpw/download and download the latest version of chntpw for 64-bit machines.
Note: In most cases it would be best to add the Debian Unstable branch to a package manager, but since the Live CD environment will revert to its original state once you reboot, it’ll be faster to just download the .deb file.

 Save the .deb file to the default location.

You can close Firefox if desired. Open a terminal window by clicking on Applications at the top-left of the screen, expanding the Accessories folder, and clicking on Terminal.

In the terminal window, enter the following text, hitting enter after each line:

cd Downloads sudo dpkg –i chntpw*

chntpw will now be installed.
Using chntpw to reset your password
Before running chntpw, you will have to mount the hard drive that contains your Windows installation. In most cases, Ubuntu 9.10 makes this simple.
Click on Places at the top-left of the screen. If your Windows driveis easily identifiable – usually by its size – then left click on it.

If it is not obvious, then click on Computer and check out each hard drive until you find the correct one.

The correct hard drive will have the WINDOWS folder in it. When you find it, make a note of the drive’s label that appears in the menu bar of the file browser.

If you don’t already have one open, start a terminal window by going to Applications > Accessories > Terminal.

In the terminal window, enter the commands

cd /media
ls

pressing enter after each line. You should see one or more strings of text appear; one of those strings should correspond with the string that appeared in the title bar of the file browser earlier.
Change to that directory by entering the command

cd

Since the hard drive label will be very annoying to type in, you can use a shortcut by typing in the first few letters or numbers of the drive label (capitalization matters) and pressing the Tab key. It will automatically complete the rest of the string (if those first few letters or numbers are unique).

We want to switch to a certain Windows directory. Enter the command:

cd WINDOWS/system32/config/

Again, you can use tab-completion to speed up entering this command.

To change or reset the administrator password, enter:

sudo chntpw SAM

SAM is the file that contains your Windows registry. You will see some text appear, including a list of all of the users on your system.

 At the bottom of the terminal window, you should see a prompt that begins with “User Edit Menu:” and offers four choices. We recommend that you clear the password to blank (you can always set a new password in Windows once you log in). To do this, enter “1” and then “y” to confirm.

If you would like to change the password instead, enter “2”, then your desired password, and finally “y” to confirm. 

If you would like to reset or change the password of a user other than the administrator, enter:

sudo chntpw –u SAM

From here, you can follow the same steps as before: enter “1” to reset the password to blank, or “2” to change it to a value you provide.

And that’s it!

Conclusion
chntpw is a very useful utility provided for free by the open source community. It may make you think twice about how secure the Windows login system is, but knowing how to use chntpw can save your tail if your memory fails you two or eight times!

Who Owns Your Social Identity?

Think that username you use all over the Internet is yours? Maybe not.

Imagine if you woke up one day to find your blog had been renamed without warning by your hosting service and your user name given to someone else.  Or what if Twitter decided to give your username away?

According to IEEE Spectrum‘s Steven Cherry these things can happen. To find out how much ownership we really have over our online identities, Cherry interviewed technologist and journalist Tristan Louis on his weekly podcast who talked about what he learned after studying the Terms of Service agreements for sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Ironically, Louis told Cherry that if Twitter wanted to collect all of Cherry’s podcasts and sell them to the highest bidder, or take all of his tweets and put them into a book, it could legally do so. While Louis said Twitter’s TOS are actually very readable compared with other sites filled with legalese, its terms put Twitter, and not users, in control of content on the site.

Louis said Facebook, which is commonly blasted for its privacy policies, says it will at least alert users before moving them to another account name, as well as give them a right to challenge the decision.

To hear Cherry’s podcast with Louis, go to IEEE Spectrum.

Are Your Passwords Too Weak?

Hacked passwords can compromise company data security. Strategies for creating the best passwords

"Breaking: Bill O Reilly is gay." That message was sent from the Fox News Twitter feed in January. A hacker had broken into Twitter's systems, thanks to a weak password chosen by a Twitter employee. By using a so-called dictionary attack -- a program that guesses passwords by systematically trying every word in the dictionary -- the hacker had figured out a Twitter employee's password:happiness. After gaining access to Twitter's systems, the hacker leaked the passwords used by Fox News and several celebrity Twitter users, including Britney Spearsand Barack Obama. Some of those Twitter feeds were subsequently filled with obscenities and links to pornography.

Then, in July, another hacker broke into a Twitter employee's personal e-mail account and was able to find a password the employee used for several Web services, including Google Apps, which Twitter employees use to share private company documents. The hacker then forwarded the sensitive information to a popular technology blog, which published many of the documents, including notes from company meetings.

As Twitter learned the hard way, data security measures are useless if a hacker manages to get an employee's password. And yet most people are pretty lazy when it comes to passwords. Security experts recommend using a different password for each application, but a survey bySophos, a security firm, found that 81 percent of respondents used the same password for multiple sites. About a third of them used the same one for everything.

Many people use very simple passwords: Two of the most commonly used arepassword and password1. Others tend to choose easy-to-remember words or dates. These weak passwords are no match for a dictionary attack, say security experts. Automated password-cracking tools can check more than a million password variations in 28 hours. Passwords composed of random strings of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and punctuation, such as J, can usually withstand an attack, but those are tough to remember.

Fortunately, there are some ways to create strong, memorable passwords. Two words connected by a number can thwart many dictionary attacks. So can using a full sentence, such as Jane Smith's Salesforce login is password, or a line from a song or a nursery rhyme. For online applications that cap password lengths, try a mnemonic, or memory aid, such as an abbreviation. For instance, take the first letter of each word in the phrase Jane Smith's Salesforce login is password. Then, to make it stronger, add an 's and substitute the number 1 for the letter l and an equal sign for is. You getJS'sS1=p, a very good eight-character password. Other tricks for strengthening abbreviation passwords are to swap an @ sign for an a and the number 3 for an e. You can vary this formula for each application you use.

Vaclav Vincalek, president of Pacific Coast Information Systems, an IT and security consultancy in Vancouver, British Columbia, uses a different mnemonic. He picks a pattern on his keyboard, like the triangle formed by the c, 6, and n keys. He enters the keys of the pyramid twice: once in lowercase, once in uppercase.

If you still have trouble remembering passwords, there are some technological fixes.Bruce Schneier, a security expert who is chief security technology officer at BT, a telecom company in the United Kingdom, created Password Safe, a free program that stores passwords. Now, he needs to remember only one password -- the one for Password Safe. Other password vaults include RoboForm and Mitto.

Some programs -- Passlogix, Imprivata, and myOneLogin -- let companies manage employee passwords for applications inside and outside the firewall for as little as $3 per user per month. Such programs tout their ability to give workers a single sign-on, one login for access to their corporate network, e-mail, and applications.

There's also software that keeps tabs on whether employees use strong passwords. Password auditing programs such as L0phtCrack, which costs $295 and up, apply various hacking techniques to check user password strength. More sophisticated -- and more costly, at $13,000 and up for a software license -- security tools such asCloakware, Cyber-Ark, and e-DMZ Security can bar an employee from using the same password for, say, logging in to e-mail as for checking the company financials.

If that sounds too complex, Schneier recommends a low-tech solution: Write your passwords on a sheet of paper and store it in a safe place. Hackers are less likely to break into a locked desk drawer.

Password protected folders with & with out SOFTWARE

older lock with software

click here

http://www.esnips.com/doc/7f993235-e6dc-4ccc-b107-7ee46b69f793/pc-security(reg)


now just download it and make it full version by the side txt files key....
.................................................
folder lock without software
1
If you have a log in password for your account, this can be used to protect folders from other users. Your hard drive must be f

ormatted using NTFS (which it probably is unless you're dual booting with another operating system). Here's what to do...


Right-click the folder that you want to make private and choose "Properties"

(or Alt+Double-click). Go to the "Sharing" tab and check the "Make this folder private" box.

Click Apply . If you do not have a password on your account, a box will pop up asking if you want to assign a password. This must be done if you want to make the folder private, so click Yes . You will need to use your password to log on to your computer from then on.
Type in a password then confirm it. Click the "Create Password" button then close the Password window.
Click OK in the Properties dialog box.
Now anyone else logged on to your computer can't access that file without knowing your password.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

2
if ur folder is zipped then directly u can open the file in it and see .... ADD A PASSWORD

and confirm ur password and it ll b safe

Recover the lost administrators password in Windows XP

Slightly more work needed if you lose or forget the Windows XP administrator password.

1.First reboot Windows XP in safe mode by re-starting the computer and pressing F8 repeated as the computer starts up.

2.Then (in safe mode) click Start and then click Run. In the open box type "control userpasswords2" without the quotes - I have just used quotes to differentiate what you have to type.

3.You will now have access to all the user accounts, including the administrators account and will be able to reset the lost password.

4.Just click the administrators user account, and then click Reset Password.

5.You will need to add a new password in the New password and the Confirm new password boxes, and confirm by clicking OK.


All done, you have recovered the lost adminitrators password!