I have given both my daughters Windows7 Netbooks for there homework and have set them as users and me as administrator. I have been hacked in the past by some local little sh....s and it now seems that it may have happened again.

My admin passowrd on both machines seem to have changed which means I cannot alter there useage rights whilst on school holidays. I understand that it is possible to force a new administrator password but I would rather crack the existing one to confirm or not whether I have been hacked, or whether I've just got it wrong. I know what the current passowrds should be but I used there names and the word Allowed and cannot with certanty say that I'm not gettgin it wrong. Can anyone help before I end up spending hundreds sending it off for analysis. I can still get access to the machine via the kids accounts but would like to know one way or another for my own piece of mind. If I have been hacked then I know who it'll be and will be cleaning off my baseball bat! :-)

Hi lee217

Do you perhaps have access to a desktop PC with prefferably Win7 or Vista on it?

A tool i started using 3 or so years ago is 'Cain&Abel'(http://www.oxid.it/cain.html) is a free tool that was originally designed for password recovery, although the ethical hacker world has taken a liking into it.

If you can download it(its free...), and install it(your anti-virus may fight a bit with you, but don't worry it's not a virus), connect one of the notebooks to your desktop PC over a LAN connection, and use one of its' many cracking methods.

Some hints for a strong password... Include numbers and both upper&lower case lettering, as if a dictionary or brute force attack is attempted to break this password, it might take a while...

I wish you luck with your problem!

Konboot and Cain and Abel are both great tools. I've used them with plenty of success many of times. 

Cain and Abel will need admin access when used over the network to access the admin$ share. Since he doesn't have it, it will not help.

Another way to go about getting the current admin password is to use metasploit to exploit a vulnerability in on or both of the laptops.

Yet another thing that could of happened is that the girls, or one of their friends, could of used said tools to keep daddy's prying eyes out by changing the admin password.