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Re: [WIN8] Windows 8 Password Reset

said by psloss:

said by Guru:

Answer to your questions: It gave me a error saying "Utlman.exe" does not exist or cannot be copied, not 100% sure, didn't take screenshot or wrote the error code word per word.

Drive letter was "X:" as it showed in the above posted guide! According to the guide, it should've created a copy of cmd where Ease of Access. Just like it's showed in this URL: »www.addictivetips.com/wi ··· assword/

The convention used for Windows-based recovery media (see 'WinPE', short for 'Windows Preinstallation Environment') is to mount the recovery operating system as drive X. There are at least two copies of Windows in play in this situation:

1) The 'online' version of Windows mapped from the boot media to a RAM drive; that's the X drive, the one being used for repair.

2) The 'offline' version of Windows, the one that is being repaired.

If you look at the reference cited, the author makes multiple asides to this:
quote:
You will see a list of your disk partitions, from which you can easily find your Windows installation partition. Usually it is the C drive but if it is a different one, make sure to use that throughout the rest of the tutorial.
quote:
(make sure to replace C in the first command to the appropriate drive letter for your Windows partition, if it’s different in your case)
And then in the instructions, the first command after using diskpart (to identify the offline Windows partition) is 'C:', switching from the online recovery Windows drive to the offline Windows drive. Here's PNG from the blog showing that:
»cloud.addictivetips.com/ ··· ep-8.png

It looks like I might've made a boo-boo but if I recall correctly, I had switched to c: but somehow it managed to give me error.

I am going to try on another machine which has Win8. But thanks for pointing that out.

Does anyone have any experience using the above Paid software?
Elcomsoft or Passware. Thanks!

Cudni
La Merma - Vigilado
MVM
join:2003-12-20
Someshire

Cudni

MVM

said by Guru:

Does anyone have any experience using the above Paid software?
Elcomsoft or Passware. Thanks!

Either work extremely well

Cudni
psloss
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join:2002-02-24

psloss to Guru

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said by Guru:

It looks like I might've made a boo-boo :) but if I recall correctly, I had switched to c: but somehow it managed to give me error.

Not a biggie; what's important is to check the drive letter where the offline Windows directory is. The author's note about it 'usually' being the C drive is the opposite of my experience -- I'm dealing mostly with consumer OEM builds or clean, 'non-custom' installs, though.

The drive letter assigned to the offline Windows directory is rarely 'C' for me. Couple of examples are included here. The screengrab above is looking at a clean Windows 8 x64 install from the Windows 8 install CD in "repair" mode; the copy/paste text quoted below is from a WinPE 3.0 CD looking at an Acer OEM Windows 7 machine. In these cases, the offline Windows directory is on drive 'D', not 'C'.

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7600]
 
X:\Tools>diskpart
 
Microsoft DiskPart version 6.1.7600
Copyright (C) 1999-2008 Microsoft Corporation.
On computer: MININT-DIMMTMN
 
DISKPART> list volume
 
  Volume ###  Ltr  Label        Fs     Type        Size     Status     Info
  ----------  ---  -----------  -----  ----------  -------  ---------  --------
  Volume 0     F   CD_ROM       CDFS   DVD-ROM      139 MB  Healthy
  Volume 1     C   SYSTEM RESE  NTFS   Partition    100 MB  Healthy
  Volume 2     D   Acer         NTFS   Partition    447 GB  Healthy
  Volume 3     E   PQSERVICE    NTFS   Partition     18 GB  Healthy    Hidden
 
DISKPART> exit
 
Leaving DiskPart...
 
X:\Tools>dir C:\ /a
 Volume in drive C is SYSTEM RESERVED
 Volume Serial Number is B08E-B461
 
 Directory of C:\
 
11/10/2012  12:43 PM    <DIR>          Boot
11/20/2010  07:23 PM           383,786 bootmgr
11/10/2012  01:04 PM    <DIR>          System Volume Information
               1 File(s)        383,786 bytes
               2 Dir(s)      75,362,304 bytes free
 
X:\Tools>dir D:\ /a
 Volume in drive D is Acer
 Volume Serial Number is 5290-A5B6
 
 Directory of D:\
 
01/07/2013  04:13 PM    <DIR>          $Recycle.Bin
11/10/2012  01:08 PM    <DIR>          book
10/14/2011  02:10 AM             8,192 BOOTSECT.BAK
07/13/2009  09:08 PM    <JUNCTION>     Documents and Settings [C:\Users]
11/10/2012  01:36 PM    <DIR>          Dolby PCEE4
02/26/2013  02:54 AM     3,104,722,944 hiberfil.sys
11/10/2012  01:05 PM    <DIR>          Intel
11/10/2012  10:58 AM    <DIR>          OEM
02/26/2013  02:54 AM     4,139,630,592 pagefile.sys
07/13/2009  07:20 PM    <DIR>          PerfLogs
01/27/2013  06:27 AM    <DIR>          Program Files
02/06/2013  03:31 AM    <DIR>          Program Files (x86)
02/06/2013  03:39 AM    <DIR>          ProgramData
11/10/2012  10:56 AM    <DIR>          Recovery
02/08/2013  10:07 AM    <DIR>          review
02/22/2013  04:02 AM    <DIR>          System Volume Information
01/07/2013  11:54 AM    <DIR>          Users
03/19/2010  03:55 PM         2,073,703 VS_EXPBSLN_x64_enu.CAB
03/19/2010  03:58 PM           551,424 VS_EXPBSLN_x64_enu.MSI
02/06/2013  03:34 AM    <DIR>          Windows
               5 File(s)  7,246,986,855 bytes
              15 Dir(s)  224,921,772,032 bytes free
 
X:\Tools>
 
Guru
join:2008-10-01

Guru

Member

Yeh, I see that. That could've been the problem, thanks for taking the time to explain in detail.