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How to Recover Passwords Using Ophcrack LiveCD

By Tim Fisher, About.com

6 of 10

Boot to the Ophcrack LiveCD Disc

Boot to the Ophcrack LiveCD Disc - Ophcrack LiveCD Menu

Ophcrack LiveCD Menu

After the initial startup of your computer is complete, as shown in the previous step, the Ophcrack LiveCD menu should display.

You don't need to do anything here. Ophcrack LiveCD will continue automatically after the Automatic boot in x seconds... timer at the bottom of the screen expires. If you'd like to advance the process a little faster, feel free to hit Enter while Ophcrack Graphic mode is highlighted.

Don't See This Screen? If Windows started, you see an error message, or you see a blank screen, then something went wrong. If you see anything other than the menu screen shown above then Ophcrack LiveCD did not start correctly and will not recover your password.

Are You Booting to the CD Correctly?: The most likely reason that Ophcrack LiveCD might not be working properly is because your computer is not configured to boot from the CD you burned. Don't worry, it's an easy fix.

Check out my How to Boot Your Computer From a Bootable CD guide. You'll probably need to make changes to your boot order - it's all explained in the guide. After that, go to the previous step and try booting to the Ophcrack LiveCD again. You can continue to follow this guide from there.

Did You Burn the ISO File Correctly?: The second most likely reason that the Ophcrack LiveCD isn't working is because the ISO file was not burned properly. ISO files are special kinds of files and have to burned differently than you may have burned music or other files. Go back to Step 4 and try burning the Ophcrack LiveCD ISO file again.

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