You have just completed installing Windows Server 2008, and you hit the Ctrl+Alt+Delete key and then you were lost, What administator password and username should I used? Especially that you did not create any during the installation process! In this article, I will show you how to successfully reset to Windows server 2008. Windows Server 2008 is one of Microsoft Windows' server line of operating systems. Released to manufacturing on February 4, 2008, and officially released on February 27, 2008, it is the successor to Windows Server 2003, released nearly five years earlier. A second release, named Windows Server 2008 R2, was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009. The solution is a two stage process. The first stage is preparation and requires the use of PING (Partimage is not ghost) which is a linux environment that can run off of a disc. You need to download the PING image and burn it to a disc before continuing. Now that you have the disc ready, here are the steps to follow: 1. Put the disc in your server and boot off of it. The process to do this differs by server but I am sure you can figure it out (or have done it before). 2. The PING linux environment will load. 3.When the environment is fully loaded, you will receive a “>>” prompt. 4.At the “>>” prompt, type “x” and press the ENTER key. “x“ will take you to a command shell rather than launching the PING user interface. 6.At the “PING login:” prompt, type in “root” and press the ENTER key. 7.At this ping you should be logged into the PING operating system. Now we need to run a few shell commands. Run the following command: fdisk -l : grep NTFS 8.This command will list all the NTFS partitions. As best as you can, note the name of the one that contains the Windows directory. 9.Run the following command: mkdir -p /mnt/windows 10.This command creates a directory called “/mnt/windows” that will be used for mounting the windows partition 11.Run the following command: mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda3 /mnt/windows 12.This command actually performs the mount. “/dev/sda3″ is the name of the device (from step 7) that holds the windows partition. This was “sda3″ for me but may vary for you. 13.Run the following command: cd /mnt/windows/Windows/System32 14.This command changes the current directory to the System32 directory in the Windows partition. Now that the partition has been mounted, you can consider “/mnt/Windows” as the root drive of your server so “/mnt/windows/Windows/System32″ is the equivalent to “C:\Windows\System32″. 15.Run the following command: mv Magnify.exe Magnify.bak 16.This command renames the “Magnify.exe” file, which is in the System32 folder. 17.Run the following command: cp cmd.exe Magnify.exe 18.This command, the final one, makes a copy of “cmd.exe” and names it “Magnify.exe”. 19.Remove the disc and reboot. The steps above all make up the first stage, which is really the primary stage. You see, we can’t really (easily) recover the password. All the steps above bring you to a point where you will actually be able to bypass authentication all together with something akin to a backdoor. Now you see why I started by saying that it should only be used for good. For the second stage, we need to wait until Windows has booted and you are at the login screen. On this screen you will notice a small icon in the lower left corner o |