Switched On Tech Design

Category: Windows 7

How to reset a user password in Windows without knowing the original password

Today we were asked how to reset a Windows user password (in this case the administrator account for a Windows Home Server 2011 install) without knowing the original password. The user had a logged-in Administrator session but had typo’d their password twice successfully during the install and was not keen on reinstalling then repeating the several hours of setup they had just completed.

If this happens to you, open up a CMD window with Administrator privileges (in the WHS 2011 example the CMD window automatically has these) and type the following:

net user [username] *

In this case:

net user administrator *

You will be prompted to enter a new password without having to provide the existing password first. To get a list of the users on the system, you can run:

net users

Use this for good, not evil!

May 30, 2014
Browsing the web through a SSH tunnel with Firefox and Putty (Windows)

If you have the ability to SSH into a remote machine you also have the ability to direct your web browser’s traffic through SSH to that machine. This can be quite handy for browsing the (remote) local network without opening a HTTP port on the firewall.

First, install Putty and Firefox. Putty can be found here and Firefox here. If you’re not sure which file to download for Putty, just go for putty.exe. Once you’ve downloaded Putty, open it and you should see a screen like this:

Enter in the remote computer’s IP address and SSH port number (usually 22 unless you changed it) and test the connection to make sure you can log in. If that works, disconnect and go to Connection -> SSH -> Tunnels like so:

then change the selection from Local to Dynamic. After that, enter 2048 into the “Source port” field and click Add. Your screen should now look like:

Note the D in front of the source port number – that should be there.

Scroll back up on the left until you get back to the original Session window. Check the IP address and port numbers and enter a name in the “Saved Sessions” box, then click Save. Now you can load these settings again next time you open Putty.

The version of Firefox we’re using for today’s example is 18.0.2. Go to Tools -> Options -> Advanced (you may have to hit Alt to bring up the Tools menu at the top):

Now choose Network then Settings. You should see a window like this:

Now choose “Manual proxy configuration” and enter localhost in SOCKS Host, and 2048 in the corresponding Port field like so:

Click OK then again on the previous screen, open your Putty connection and the next URL you enter should be tunneled through to your remote server! To undo this, simply go into Firefox and put the above screen back to “Use system proxy settings”.

February 18, 2013
Windows 7 – Stopping a Wacom pen from right-clicking on a long press (aka press and hold)

This is a personal bugbear which I encounter every time I reinstall a W7 OS. The problem is that when you hold the pen down – like you might when you’re trying to highlight text – Windows has a default setting of assuming that you wish to right click, which interrupts the selection you were making in an extremely irritating fashion. This isn’t a setting in the Wacom tablet settings, either, so it can be a little hard to find. The solution is in the Windows “Pen and Touch” settings (hit the Start button and then type “Pen” and you should see it as one of the options).

Pen Options -> Press and hold -> Settings -> untick “Enable press and hold for right-clicking” -> Click OK -> Click Apply.

While this may be a handy option for pens which don’t have a right-click button it really only serves to be a hindrance for a lot of Wacom users, it seems.

February 13, 2013