One of my clients had a problem where, for some unknown reason, they or some program had set a password on their only user account on their new Vista Sony Vaio laptop. What ever password they would try, it didn't work.

Of course, they didn't have the rebuild DVDs on hand (normally it is cheaper for me to just reinstall the OS on the laptop), so I opted to crack the password(s) on the laptop.

I tried 3 different tools. Most password cracking tools are based on a boot up linux based tool. Problem with these and the Sony Vaio, is that the laptops hardware is so new, these boot discs would hang on boot up.

Solution, take the hard drive out, hook it up to a "vanilla" PC, and then run the tools.

Tools used:

1. http://ophcrack.sourceforge.net/
2. http://www.pcloginnow.com/
3. http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/

I ended up just making the existing user accounts have no password - and used PC Login Now. Didn't work out how to log into Vista Home Premium via the administrator account (which didn't have a password) - yes I did try booting via safemode - but got in by clearing the passwords.

This just goes to show if you have any sensitive data on your laptop, encrypt it first with something like Trucrypt!