Use Ophcrack LiveCD to Recover Passwords

Dear Tim,
Hi, I have been able to successfully download the ophcrack live cd iso thing to a cd, and kind of boot my pc from the cd. But as I boot it from the cd I get as far as up to here- http://pcsupport.about.com/od/toolsofthetrade/ss/ophcracksbs_6.htm on the screen. That image does actually come up, and it does count down like you say, but then after that my screen goes blank and theres nothing on my screen? And then as my screen is blank(black), my screen actually says-”Input range out of range, switching to”…some other number like 60hz or something like that. And I’m pretty sure my cd drive was still working cause the green light on it was flashing, and it was making that verrrrm noise. I waited about 15 min and still nothing happened? Why isnt anything appearing? Is it just the screen, or is the cd messed up, although I dont think its the cd because that picture(in the link) with the countdown comes up. Do you know?
Thanks, John

John,

Other readers have complained of this same issue but I haven’t replicated it myself on any system I’ve used ophcrack LiveCD on.

My suggestion would be to post this question in the support forums on ophcrack’s website. Someone from the development team might be able to help you out there.

I’ve tried for 2 days to get this to work. It doesn’t. How could this program possibly be ‘the best’? I think it’s a scam.

Marshall,

In my experience with several password cracking tools, Ophcrack is by far the quickest, easiest, and most effective tool. However, like every other program on Earth, it’s not perfect. Some people have problems with it.

I’m also not sure how it can be much of a “scam” when it’s free, but if you don’t like it, don’t use it.

My suggestion would be to visit Ophcrack’s support area and see if there’s a fix for your issue. If it’s just not finding your password then it may be too long or complicated for Ophcrack to find. Again, check Ophcrack’s support site for more help there.

Hope you have better luck in the future!

Some time ago I password protected the BIOS on my computer and lost the password. I tried using Ophcrack, but it only finds account passwords. Is there any thing I can do to remedy this?
My computer is a Lenovo laptop 3000 C200
Windows XP Home 1.5 GB Ram

Robert,

I’d check the manual that came with your laptop or check with Lenovo’s website. Usually there’s a way to reset the BIOS configuration on the motherboard. Since you’re using a laptop, this may be a little more difficult or maybe even impossible but Lenovo will have to give you more details.

If you had a desktop I might be able to give you some general guidance but laptops can be very different.

Hi Tim, Ophcrack will not boot on my laptop. The issue i am having with Ophcrack is that once i boot the Lap and it begins its initial startup i recieve an Error message saying something like ” Linux Error 47A etc..
This happens also on my desktop Pc, could it be due to the burning process?

Gavin,

My guess is yes, it’s the burning process. Something must have “goofed”. I haven’t ever seen that error in my uses of Ophcrack so the fact that you’ve seen it on both seems a bit odd.

Then again I’m not an Ophcrack expert either. You could try the forums on the Ophcrack site… they might give you some idea if a re-burn doesn’t do the trick.

guys if i have download the ophcrack password cracker but i think though it is easy and quicker process it is not strong enough to crack ur strong password.if u give ur password
text+digit then it only able to find it out.Example: password is “tasnim004″ but if u make a strong password like “tas@%!001″
it this case it will not able to find out the password
i tested it many times with many password

Yep – the best way to prevent someone from using a tool like this to crack YOUR password, use a strong password with lots of numbers and characters.

I run the program but it never finds the user. What do i do?

@Tim – If a user is never found, then it doesn’t exist where Ophcrack is looking, it does exist and Ophcrack is having an issue of some kind, or your Windows installation is having issues other than your inability to remember the password.

If I were you, my next step would be to visit the Ophcrack forum and ask for help. That, or use another password cracking program like PC Login Now:

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/toolsofthetrade/gr/pcloginnow.htm

Tim, I want to thank you for your work here! Many, many thanks!

You might want to emphasize the importance of the BIOS boot list though.

Also, on the computer I needed to open, there were two partitions, named 0 and 1.

ophcrack ddn’t work on 0 but worked wonderfully on 1.

Any advice on opening 0?

ophcrack lover – I’ll be sure to update the guide and stress that point.

Do you have a valid Windows installation on partition 0? If not, there would be no password to retrieve.

Well, I’m in the camp that can’t get this program to work. The Linux OS doesn’t finish the boot, ends up with some I/O error and sits forever. Reburned the disk, same thing.

This is the error I’m getting, looks like I’m not the only one:
http://ophcrack.sourceforge.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=326

With exactly the kind of help you’d expect from an open source solution.

If it works, great, if it doesn’t, look elsewhere.

Matt, you have a good point. When it comes to support, open source software can be hit-and-miss.

I really appreciate what you are doing here and I am hoping that you can be of assistance to me. I have downloaded the version for Vista and that went fine. I have burnt the ISO file to a disc using Roxio and a ISO burning software and both processes worked very well. I have restarted my laptop with the disc in and it all goes according to plan and comes up to the screen that you show in part 6 of you step by step. Now here is where my problems starts. Like you mentioned in part 7 a lot of lines of text start streaming down the screen but it never gets through it all??!!! Your part 7 shows a line stating something about the website followed by some lines of text under that with green * in front of them and I never get to that point. It always hangs up just after something that has to do with SOMETHING similar to this “asxi=-0, pin=-1, asxi=-1, pin=-2″ (that is not the exact letters but similiar) and under that is just a blinking cursor. I wait, and wait and nothing and the computer shuts down???? I don’t know what else to do. HELP

i downloaded it and it all went to plan and burned it and it all worked however wen i reboot it it gets stuk on one screen which is screen 8. it dosnt go onto screen 9 but it shows it found 2 participants with hash and it has number 0 nxt to the first one and 1 next to the second one but nothing hapens afterwards.. plz help

To everyone having problems with Ophrack – I’d recommend visiting their support area at http://ophcrack.sourceforge.net/forum.

If you just flat can’t get it to work, check out another password cracker. PC Login Now is good and is in the list:

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/toolsofthetrade/tp/passrecovery.htm

i pressed enter on that screen and it sasy problem with finiding hash and all that and it dosnt crack passwords it just ask me to shut down the system wt do i do

Hello Tim:

I downloaded the iso image, and copy to CD. When booting the computer with the CD, it gives me the following error:

”
Could not find kernel image: linux
boot:
”

What should I do at this point?

Ray

Ray – check out comment #19 above.

hi tim
yeh um i downloaded ophcrack (latest version)
i tried it on my computer andit works however i tried it on my laptop and it gets stuck on something called multiuser wat do i do know thanks

Andrew, your laptop is either having some kind of problem (either with the hard drive or the CD/DVD drive) or Linux (which is the OS loading from the CD you made) is having an issue working with that particular set of hardware.

I’d recommend visiting Ophcrack’s support site.

help? When I get to the launch.sh window (http://pcsupport.about.com/od/toolsofthetrade/ss/ophcracksbs_8.htm), it shows three partitions and prompts me to choose one. When I choose any of them, it displays “Starting Ophcrack”, bu then says there was an error in the file. What’s going on, and how can I fix it?

Kevin: You might have a serious problem with your hard drive and those partitions aren’t accessible to Ophcrack.

Other than that, it might just be a problem with Ophcrack. Have you tried their forums?

I used the graphic mode but how come I cant read any of the text in the window that opens?

And to add to that the first window that shows says “Problem while preloading table vista free,2 at file 1. Input/output error” like 6 times

I’ve used Ophcrack before on my newer laptop and it worked just fine. However, I am trying to use it on my other older laptop (about 5 yrs old, xp, bios and my old login does NOT show up in the list of usernames). Care to share where I can look for a solution? thanx.

Hi
I used it as you said but at the end password not found what shoul i do?

thanks

Hi Munee,

Have you tried the second program in the list of tools, Offline NT Password & Registry Editor?

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/toolsofthetrade/tp/passrecovery.htm

It works differently so you should give it a try.

I have fully downloaded Ophcrack LiveCD, when i boot with it then I reach the graphical interface, but ophcrack does not start automatically. how do i get Ophcrack to start cracking.

Thanks.

Tyler: It should start automatically so if you don’t see a window or other dialog box that’s asking/telling you something, them Ophcrack is probably failing on you to some degree.

Have you tried their forums that I’ve linked to a few times in other comments? How about the other password tool I linked to in my comment above yours?

Hi, I was wondering if you could help me out with what I believe to be a simple problem with the Ophcrack Software. Using your tutorial, I’ve been able to successfully run Ophcrack and begin cracking the passwords.However..it doesn’t seem to be working correctly. I first tried to recover the password using the text-only method,and it seemed to work fine. The name of the profile I need to crack is named “Sherry,” and it said it found the password for this profile. It displayed that the NT password for Sherry is “…….” which Is not correct. When I tried running it on the normal Graphic version, it displays the profiles but it’s almost as if the font is white against the white background..the information appears to be invisible even though I know the cracking is complete and it’s displaying the password. Is there any way to make the text visable?

Please contact me at this email, anyone who knows how to fix THIS;

jordan_jaml13@hotmail.com

Hi Jordan – I saw your post in the forum and I’ll respond there:

http://forums.about.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?tsn=1&nav=messages&webtag=ab-pcsupport&tid=6862

i have the same question as #18 but your reply link on #19 doesn’t follow through. i still can’t find anything to help me out and i’ve tried finding other sites. i don’t know what to imput and highlighting/entering just ends up with and error reading file message…

April,

The Ophcrack forum changed their location. Try this:

http://apps.sourceforge.net/phpbb/ophcrack/

Also, PC Login Now is now a pay-for program. A free equivalent can be found here:

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/toolsofthetrade/gr/offlinentpwed.htm

Hope that helps.

Hi Tim,
First of all thanks for your step by step process it was very clear and handy. Only problem is when i let the ophcrack run, it follows through to the point where it gives me a hash thing, then says my password is saved in /tmp/ophcrack.txt
I went online and searched for a solution, only one i could find said i should type “n” for it not to shutdown, then to type “more /tmp/ophcrack.txt” but it still did not work. Going to the website like you said in your #19 comment didn’t help either. Any suggestions? Thanks a bunch.

Hi Tim,

I’ve run Ophcrack, and unfortunately my password is a strong one, so Ophcrack hasn’t been able to find it. However, I know my password–well, almost. It’s a word with numeric and other character substitutions–the EXACT nature of which I can’t quite remember, or I wouldn’t be having this problem. Is there any way to prompt Ophcrack with what you think the password is and have it start from there? So for instance if you think the password is something like “p@$$w0rd”, but you haven’t quite got it right, Ophcrack could start with a partial solution and perhaps be successful from there? If Ophcrack can’t do this, is there another program that can? Thanks much.

saf: Are you using the Live CD version of Ophcrack or the desktop one?

Alison: No, Ophcrack does not have this functionality. It would be very cool if it did, but it does not. I’m not aware of another program, free or not, that does that. My suggestion to you is to use another program like ONTPRE (it’s free too). It deletes the password, it doesn’t find it. It’s a great alternative unless you have your files encrypted, in which case you’d lose access to them forever… unless you remembered your password sometime in the future. Most people haven’t encrypted their files.

Hi Tim: I’ve been trying to put ophcrack on my SanDisk Cruzer Micro 4GB and previously gotten error such at “Disk error” or “Kernel image not found: Linux” but after messing with it I got rid of the errors when i started over and followed this guide http://techrena.blogspot.com/2009/03/ophcrack-usb-booting-windows-password.html

however now when i select it to boot from the usb it gives me a blank (white) screen and when i hit enter it prompts me for a password. Can you help?

i used ophcrack it went trough the hall prosses and at the end it said no found.

anyone knows why ? and what should i do?

Sam, I haven’t tried booting to Ophcrack via USB but my guess is that your USB drive wasn’t formatted properly. Did you use a tool like the HP USB Format Tool to do the formatting?: http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file/fid,64963-order,4/description.html

jc, take a look at some of the previous comments. My suggestion would be to visit Ophcrack’s forum or try another password tool. There may be an issue with your installation of Windows that’s preventing Ophcrack from seeing it.

Hey Tim. I was wondering how to get ophcrack to work using the desktop version? whenever i try i cant find the hash files. When i try to find the encrypted SAM where it says it usally is (C:\WINDOWS\system32\config\) it says no valid hash file found???

Joshua, I’ve never used the desktop version. I’ve been under the assumption that it works similarly so I’d treat the error similarly. I’ve heard of this one on the LiveCD version and it usually means that there’s some issue with your Windows installation or SAM or Ophcrack simply won’t work with your installation for some reason. Why this happens I don’t know. Have you tried posting in the Ophcrack Forums for an answer? I’m sure a developer would have a better answer than me! http://sourceforge.net/apps/phpbb/ophcrack/

A couple of minor hiccups but totally worked! Thanks!

when i reboot my system on ophcrack live cd then after every thing it linux appears.then how to crack the password ???

X35, everything should be automatic. When Ophcrack boots, a long procedure starts that finishes with the display of your passwords. You usually don’t even have to hit one key.

You can see the whole walk-through here: http://pcsupport.about.com/od/toolsofthetrade/ss/ophcracksbs.htm

I downloaded the live cd for vista because my laptop is running windows 7 but when I go to boot it, it just goes to a blank grey screen. Can anybody help me? Thanks

Thor, do you get any indication that the CD is being booted to at all? Any logo, message, etc.? If not, it may be that the CD was not burned properly, the download was corrupted, or your computer is not properly booting the drive. You can check BIOS to be sure of that.

OK, going after vista home premium on a Acer Aspire AM1610-U1201A. iso burned, 3.31 loaded no problem, running slitaz, all looks good. The auto launch can find no hash files. I go to mount the drives manually, and only the recovery partition is available, sda3. I’m certain that the SAM file is on sda2. My suspicion is that Vista is protecting even viewing the drive from a virtual system. Do I need to find and load a device driver list in order to view the sda2?

What else could be going on.

Thanks in advance.

Chuck

Chuck, if you need to install a driver for Ophcrack to veiw that partition then you’re over my head on the program. You might get some help from the Ophcrack folks over on their forum: http://sourceforge.net/apps/phpbb/ophcrack/

Be sure to try ONTP&RE too:

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/toolsofthetrade/gr/offlinentpwed.htm

ophcrack – could not find kernel image linux error. used usboph. followed every step correctly. How do you fix the error? I checked comment #19. That forum does nothing. I loads a blank page. Please explain how to fix the error. Feel free to email me any links that would help me or detailed steps to take to fix this error. Thank you.

email is Courtesybassist@aim.com… thank you