How to crack a Windows XP or Vista password with Ophcrack Live CD

by Vivek Gite · 39 comments

Ophcrack is a Windows password cracker based on rainbow tables. It is a very efficient implementation of rainbow tables done by the inventors of the method. It comes with a GTK+ Graphical User Interface and runs on Windows, Mac OS X (Intel CPU) as well as on Linux.

There is also article and more screen shots at Lifehacker:
Extremely impressed at the ease and speed with which the Ophcrack Live CD cracked my Windows admin password when I tested it out last a few weeks ago, I thought it might be useful to throw together a quick guide detailing how to use this powerful little utility.

How to crack a Windows XP or Vista password with Ophcrack Live CD

Whether you need to recover the lost password to a Windows account, you're looking to ensure that your passwords are secure, or you're a super l33t h4x0r, the Ophcrack Live CD is a pretty useful tool.

{ 39 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Agent Soul February 11, 2007 at 8:19 pm

Does this crack vista passwords? I got a few of them that need to be reset but dont have the time to reformat them to get them working again.

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2 ishaq aliyu muhammad January 8, 2010 at 9:43 am

yes u can crack vista password with it

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3 dsa August 14, 2007 at 2:10 pm

how can i crack vista in Ophcrack Live CD

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4 ali January 18, 2008 at 3:57 am

required to remove password from vista machine

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5 rajeev March 23, 2008 at 7:51 pm

how creack computer account password

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6 alijah mohammad January 27, 2009 at 9:10 pm

it is very self explanotory. you boot from disc, and it cracks passwords automatically. very simple my friends. very simple.

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7 bimo November 8, 2009 at 9:33 pm

unfortunately, ophcrack didn’t recover any of my passwords… and the one that I knew was only 9 alpha-numeric chars. I was quite disappointed with it (even though the interface is nice)

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8 Melvin February 18, 2009 at 1:22 pm

i downloaded the Ophcrack.iso file and burn into a cd disc.
I did try to boot up the pc with the disc, but it seem not booting from the disc.
my pc did looking for a while on the disc and continue to boot from my harddisk.
Is there anything that i miss out?

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9 dave March 5, 2009 at 10:43 am

i used this OPH live cd with vista and its couldnt crack my password, my xp one cracked all the users, but vista didnt get cracked????

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10 JOHN March 8, 2009 at 7:36 am

does ophcrack require a regular cd-r or a dvd cd? which is best? also, do i boot from the pph cd or put in at a certain time?

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11 Jerome ;) March 5, 2010 at 3:44 am

see u can ONLY use CD R, which pisses me off bcuz i have DVD R only -.-

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12 Jade J'adore March 30, 2009 at 8:43 pm

once the .iso file is downloaded would I need to burn it onto the cd/dvd useing a burn image program or just copy/paste file onto disk? Thanks! -JJ

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13 scabb April 12, 2009 at 4:11 am

Vista ISO didn’t work on dual core, will not load default plug n play

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14 matt April 29, 2009 at 10:58 pm

a couple questio0ns answered…
1. there is a special version for vista. just google search “ophcrack live cd vista download”
2.u do have to burn it with a cd burn program. i recommend imgburn
3.cd-r or dvd-r it doesnt matter it fits on both
4.to make sure it boots from disk do these two things
-make sure u burn it do a disk using cd burn program and not just copy-pasting files onto disk
-go into ur bios and make sure the order of boot puts cd a higher priority than hard disk
5.i think u have to install tables or something?

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15 Ankit chauhan August 13, 2009 at 4:33 am

I think this ophcrack is not made for cracking win xp or vista password. It is a cd for fun only.

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16 susan September 1, 2009 at 11:39 pm

Can anyone pass me please the link to download the ophcrack livecd for widows vista? i downloaded ophcrack 2.3.1 but it didnt work. Please help me, I really need your help, I have essential information in the system I cant loose. Thanks! SUSAN

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17 James February 6, 2010 at 12:55 am
18 ralphieboy September 2, 2009 at 6:05 pm

kernal panic – not syncing: Attemped to kill the idle task – this what I got on the post after selecting a mode with Ophcrack vista for Win Premium.. and downloaded the file twice and burned it twice.. got the same message..
oh yeah, i m using a virtual machine… it shouldn’t matter.. for my xp ophcrack Cd works great

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19 Maria September 9, 2009 at 11:57 pm

Hey with the Vista verson 2.3.1 …. when i load the ISO cd it comes up with a comand promt box which requrestes you to enter the portion you want to crack… what are you ment to do here because whatever i enter it comes up with an error… and then it loads a desktop screen with Slitaz…. is this ment to happen? is this happening to anyone else

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20 Anonymous December 18, 2009 at 2:44 am

Omg that happened to me too, how do you fix it or is the file from website broken ?? Please help

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21 Cj mc robot September 12, 2009 at 6:24 pm

um… the way ophcrack woks, IT CANNOT CRACK or FIND VISTA PASSWORDS, NOT POSSIBLE, EVEN WITH THE VISTA LIVE DISC

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22 CJ October 20, 2009 at 1:50 pm

Which is why you use it to get the SAM hash, then crack the hash with a pre-generated list….

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23 johnny October 17, 2009 at 6:56 pm

i can not get this to work on my vista can anyone tell me anything else i have info in here i can not loose

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24 Michael Armstrong October 20, 2009 at 6:31 am

If you forget the administrator’s password but still can log on Windows with other user names that have administrative privileges, you may follow the instructions below:

Right click the computer icon on your desktop, select Manage, find Local Users and Groups, unfold Users folder, right click Administrator, click Set password… in the menu comes up. Click Proceed in the dialog, in the pop-up, enter a New Password and confirm it. Your administrator’s password is successfully reset.

Guest account may help to log onto Windows, but it has no privilege for you to do the above to reset the administrator’s password.

If you forgot all user passwords and failed to log onto Windows, there is no other way but to format the OS and reinstall Windows, or resort to sort of software tools to remove the password and log onto Windows. These programs cost some bucks, but are worthy and better than to reinstall the OS causing consequences. The most popular programs are Windows Password Reset 6.0 etc. Generally, these programs are easy to use though turn out to be a scary command prompt to newbie. But do relax and you can fully manipulate. Let’s take Windows Password Reset 6.0 for example. You prepare a blank CD, burn the program onto the CD, boot the locked computer from the CD, come to initiate the program, locate the user name, and proceed to remove its password – all are at ease.

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25 paarthaa October 22, 2009 at 9:01 am

two days before i unfortunately set my password in vista……but i can login into my laptop with those passwords….and i heard about ophcrack and tried for cracking the passwords….but the result i got was “not found” in “nt pwd” column….. what can i do now……..

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26 Diana October 27, 2009 at 8:30 pm

I burned OPH 3.2.1 Vista Live to DVD and booted up. It ran through it’s processes and after about 20 minutes, none of the 3 passwords on my machine were found. What puzzles me is that I KNOW that 2 of the 3 passwords are simple (short alpha/numric only, no characters.) So, is there something more that I need to be doing besides just running the program?

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27 biruk November 12, 2009 at 9:24 am

what are the infects of ophcrack xp or vista password cracker or recovery.

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28 Guss November 19, 2009 at 3:08 pm

I tried installing ophcrack 2.3.1 live CD for vista
After booting, and loading the cd and starting ophcrack, I get a launch.sh screen showing:
Table found
/mnt/hda….etc
Found one partition thats contains hashes:
/mnt/sda2/windows/system32/config
starting ophcrack
A Problem occured while reading the SAM file found in /mnt/sda2/windows/system32/config.

press any key to exit….

Is theer a way to crack the PW on Vista or not??
any help is highly appreciated, I don’t want to fomrat the drive at this stage

pls help
Thanks
Guss

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29 Duck November 23, 2009 at 3:35 am

Sort of the same problem here guys. I get two partitions and it wants me to select one. Every time it asks me to select a partition to crack, i type the extensive directory and it gives me some error about not finding it. and says press any key to exit. how do i tell it the Partition to crack? it detects 2 partitions for me. and neither seem to work once i type the extension listed above.

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30 bombermanneo December 7, 2009 at 8:18 am

Reset /crack/hack/recovery windows password/admin password/ vista password with windows password Recovery tool 3.0

1. Log onto a computer that can link to the Internet. Download Windows Password Recovery Tool 3.0 from site: sn.im/recoverwindowspassword
for Windows XP, Vista, 2003, 2000, 2008 and decompress it on that PC. Note that: there is a .ISO file. Burn the .ISO file to a CD.
2.Get out the newly created CD and insert it to the locked computer. IT IS SHAREWARE.
3.Re-boot the locked computer and then follow the process of instructions. Just after a few steps, the old password will be removed.
4.Set new password:
Step 1: Open the “Control Panel
Step 2: Click the “User Account
Step 3: Select the account you wanna set a new password.
Step 4: Click “Changing Account ” and “Set Up Password”, then fill out the form as listed. Click “Create Password”.

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31 biman January 16, 2010 at 3:55 pm

i want a softwrae for crack the winxp password

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32 Adam December 8, 2009 at 7:29 pm

hi everyone i see you are having some issues using ophcrack on vista i had a few issues also i fixed it some of you dont seem to have downloaded the table the table is not downloaded on install you must google it and find a talbe to download it will come in a zip file you must download WINRAR from google then extract the table file to a folder on your desktop then open ophcrack click on tables, install, and find the file highlight it then click ok

once youve done that the table will be recognized by ophcrack and then click on “crack” and it will start going through the table.

if you cant even login you dont know the password you could try the live cd or if you have a graphing calculator there is a way to crack the password with it you need a computer hook up though and a small program must be installed i am pretty sure on the calculator itself
this is on youtube

on vista i am not sure yet currently i am using an XP machine when i get a chance i will test it on my laptop which runs on vista.

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33 ved prakash sharma December 9, 2009 at 9:04 am

i have vista live cd but
how can i use it
i try to use and this cd open with graph. mode but i can’t break vista password
so plz reply how to use…

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34 Stan December 16, 2009 at 6:44 am

Need help, everytime I reboot with CD in, everything goes fine, until launch.Sh pops up, it shows two partitions, 0. and 1. everytime i try to type their paths, it says a problem has occurred. Pretty much the same problem as Duck…. this is really really frustrating.

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35 tom January 8, 2010 at 4:40 pm

tried offline NT gonna try again then gonna try this tonight on vista if it dont work im just gonna do system restore to the point before i changed my password

heres the link http://downloads.sourceforge.net/ophcrack/ophcrack-vista-livecd-2.3.1.iso

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36 jess February 23, 2010 at 3:50 pm

if this deos not work for vista use ntpasswd it will work on vista and seven

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37 Tshetum Dorji February 24, 2010 at 8:14 am

I have used both ophcrack-xp-livecd and ophcrack-vista-livecd but it is displaying that password is not found…… Is there any solution to crack the password…… Please help me. Even I have used offline NT Password and Register editor, I tried to clear the password of the particular account. But when I logged in using same user account it is not working ……… Is there any soultion…….. please help me.
thank you in advance………

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38 groovey February 27, 2010 at 4:01 pm

i am using ophcrack , i dont understand the code.. can anyone read?
IQ conv Codec::convert from unicode:using ASDII for conversion iconv_open failed
QI conv Codec::convert to unicode:using ASCII for conversion,iconv_open failed
/home/tux/launch.sh: line 100: 1661 killed ophcrack-d/-t$tables_inline-w$found/-n$numcpu-o/temp/ophcrack.txt $opts then press any key to exit..
can anyone read this? is there something in there im missing? plz help thankz!

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39 arthur March 7, 2010 at 1:06 pm

@ duck , stan.
you can solve it by choosing both options, i had the problem too and tried both options, eg. 01

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