Category Archives: Windows Software

Any of the Windows operating systems and other software not specifically named.

Windows XP Lost or Forgotten password

You would think that doing something to recover a password or clear a password would be simple. Reading through all the various offerings and comments accross the web it appears that it is not simple and certainly not cheap!

This open source linux based solution manages to combine free and easy.

PC Login Now is available from SourceForge

It’s an iso CD image that you burn to a CD.  Boot the offending computer with this CD and it loads a Linux shell with the PC Login Now application.

Select the operating system that you want to access – generally you will have only one – and click on Next. Select the user that you want to access and check the Password is Empty (i.e. blank) option box and click on Next. You can then select another user or reboot the computer.

Under Windows XP (although I expect this on other Windows versions as well) you will get a prompt to scan your hard disk. I am sure this is a side effect of making the back end system change and not an issue. Let the scan run and then access your Windows system using the local user account with a blank password.

IE8 install issue: ie4uinit ordinal 654 error

I had an issue with a Windows 2003 server today with these errors in sequence.
The ordinal 654 could not be located in the dynamic link library iertutil.dll.
The ordinal 654 could not be located in the dynamic link library iertutil.dll.

Followed by another 4 or 5 including references to ordinal 672 and IEDKCS32.DLL. 

It appears to be related to a failed install of IE8 and because there is no browser Windows update will not run. 

My remedy was to download IE8 installer for Windows 2003 server.

You might need to use another version from Microsoft Downloads.

I ran this installer which then indicated that it was updating IE8 rather than installing IE8 and a reboot was required.

After this Windows update will run but there are no icons for IE to click on, so I added IE8 shortcuts “C:Program FilesInternet Exploreriexplore.exe” to the desktop and all was working.