Get Control Over Windows

How to hack Windows passwords on physical machines using a Windows installation bootable USB disk

Work in progress...

The following example is using a Windows 10 Pro machine on VMware. The steps will be similar when using a bootable USB disk.

  • Insert the bootable USB disk (equivalent or higher installation OS)

  • Restart the machine

  • Press the F2 key to enter the BIOS setup during boot up

Figure 1: Windows 10 Pro Boot Manager

  • Select the bootable disk and in the case of Figure 1, it would be 'EFI VMware Virtual SATA CDROM Drive (1.0)

Figure 2: Press any key to boot from CD or DVD...

  • As shown in Figure 2, press any key to boot from the bootable disk

Figure 3: Successful boot up using the bootable installation disk

  • Figure 3 shows that the boot up to the installation disk was successful

Figure 4: Open the command prompt (cmd.exe)

Press "Shift" + "F10" to open the command prompt as show in Figure 4

Figure 5: Check if C Drive is the correct disk drive

  • Type 'c:' + 'Enter' to change to C Drive

X:\Sources>c:

C:\>

  • Type 'dir' + 'Enter' to list all the files and directories to check if C Drive is the correct disk drive

C:>dir
Figure 6: D Drive is not the correct disk drive

  • In the case as shown in Figure 6, D Drive is not the correct disk drive

Figure 7: change directory to where the files are located

  • In Figure 7, we will need to change to the directory where the files cmd.exe and sethc.exe are located by entering 'cd Windows\System32' into the command prompt

c:\>cd Windows\System32

c:\Windows\System32>
Figure 8: Rename the sethc.exe file using the command 'ren'

  • Let's back up the sethc.exe file to sethc_bak.exe using the rename command 'ren' as shown in Figure 8

c:\Windows\System32>ren sethc.exe sethc_bak.exe
Figure 9: Copy cmd.exe and naming it as sethc.exe

  • In Figure 9, cmd.exe was copied and named as sethc.exe

c:\Windows\System32>copy cmd.exe sethc.exe
Figure 10: Click on the top right 'x' to close the command prompt

  • Close the command prompt window as shown in Figure 10 by clicking on the top right red 'x'

Figure 11: Cancel the Windows installation setup

  • Proceed to cancel the Windows installation setup as shown in Figure 11

  • Restart the machine and remove the bootable installation USB disk drive if you are using one.

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