Hack and Reset Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000 Administrator or Domain Admin Password with LOGON.SCR Trick

1. Logon or login to the Windows computer
   
   with any user account.
2. Navigate to %systemroot%\System32 in Windows Explorer. %systemroot% is your Windows installation folder, and normally located in \WINNT or \Windows (i.e. \WINNT\System32).
3. Save a copy of LOGON.SCR file, or simply rename the logon.scr file to something else. Just make sure that you remember where and what name is the backup copy.
4. Delete the original LOGON.SCR from the %systemroot%\System32 sub-folder after you have backed it up. The file should no longer exist if you rename it.

   Note: If you having problem to delete or rename LOGON.SCR, it may be due to permission settings. Try to take ownership of the LOGON.SCR (by right clicking on LOGON.SCR, then select Properties and go to the Security tab, then click on the Ownership. Click “Take Ownership” and then click Yes to the prompt message.), and give the Everyone group Full Control permissions (by right clicking on LOGON.SCR then select Properties, then go to Security tabs. Click on Add and browse to and add the Everyone group. Give Everyone Full Control and then click on OK.) You may need to install an alternate second copy of Windows on the machine to do so as detailed at the end of this article.

5. Copy and paste the CMD.EXE located in %systemroot%\System32 to create additional copy of CMD.EXE in the same directory, then rename the new copied file as LOGON.SCR. This will let the Windows NT or Windows 2000 to use CMD.EXE command prompt program as the screen saver that will be activated after computer idle for specific minutes.
6. Ensure that you activate the screen saver of the Windows.
7. Wait for the computer screen saver activation idle wait time timeout, so that Windows will load the unprotected DOS command prompt in the context of the local system account as if it’s the screen saver.
8. In the CMD command prompt that is opened, key in the following command to reset and change the administrator’s password:

   net user administrator newpassword

   And the user account for administrator will have the new password of newpassword (which you should change to your own password). With the syntax of net use user_name new_password, it can be used to reset or modify the password of other administrative user account’s passwords.

9. You can now log on to the administrator account with the new password. You may want to replace back the original LOGON.SCR that has been backed up or renamed.
10. You may want to delete the alternate installation of Windows, by deleting the installation folder or format the partition (if you install in different partition), and removing the second Windows entry in BOOT.INI file at the root. Use attrib -r -s -h c:\boot.ini to change and allow the boot.ini to be modified and viewed.

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