Troubleshooting Login Recovery
Our software relies on the ability to read the password entries which store the encrypted passwords. This only works if the passwords are held on the machine itself, which is the case for most desktops, laptops and home computers. If however the computer uses a domain controller for password management, our software may not work.
Passwords range from the very simple such as "abc" to the very complicated like "abcd1234%^&*[]{}". If the original password is greater than 14 characters and contains symbols, we may not be able to decrypt the password. This is quite rare as most passwords are much simplier. In terms of the time it takes, the more complex the password, the longer it will take. Short passwords should take less than 5 minutes, longer or more complex passwords may take up to an hour.
Another password issue we occasionaly have is where enhanced security features have been enabled on the computer. This is where we only receive part of the password decryption and cannot complete the entire process. These will be reported as failed passwords.
Passwords to be decrypted are added to a queue, however due to the number of requests received, it can sometimes take up to 72 hours for a password to be decrypted. This service is provided free of charge, on the basis that you accept there will be a delay of three days.
Alternatively, a priority service is provided where upon payment, your passwords will be placed at the front of the queue. In many cases this means that your passwords will be decrypted in less than 10 minutes.
If you intend to use the prioity service you will see a link to purchase when viewing the passwords. You should only pay for the priority service if you can see that your passwords have been decrypted for the usernames you need. You should not pay for the priority service if the decryption is still pending or in progress as this may result in you paying for a service which will not work.
If you pay for the priority service, IT IS FOR ONE ORDER ONLY, which may consist of one or more passwords. If you perform two seperate uploads of passwords, creating two orders and you wish the priority service for both, you will have to pay twice.
In order to stop some corporate users from abusing the free service, we have now introduced a limit in that you may only use the free service once every three months. If you use the free service more than once within a three month period, you will have to pay for the priority service.
Payment for the service is made through Secure Hosting who offer 128-bit SSL encryption to ensure secure transmission of your information.
Check the contents of the floppy disk, and ensure it contains our files, which should include a file called "upload.txt". If it does not contain these files, repeat the process or try another disk.
If the floppy does not boot, and the computer starts normally,
you will need to set the floppy disk drive as a boot device in the BIOS. Look in the instructions to your computer (motherboard) to find out how to do this. (HINT: Try pressing and holding the Delete key and turning the computer on. Then select Floppy as the first boot device in the advanced options menu.)
If after selecting the floppy drive, and it appears the floppy drive is being accessed but its not booting, then the boot disk is not compatable with your system. Copy the contents of the floppy disk onto a folder on your PC, and then reformat the floppy disk using the standard windows Format option. Ensure you check the option "Create an MS-DOS startup disk". Once complete, copy over the contents from the original floppy onto this newly formatted floppy disk and repeat the process.
Why passwords fail
Passwords are stored on computers using a technique of hashing which converts something readable like "abcd" into a string like "0,CC,5E,9A,CB,AD,1B,25,C9,AA,D3,B4,35,B5,14,04,EE", making it unreadable. Windows computers traditionally store two types of hash, being an LMHash and NThash, both slightly different. However on some systems where security has been tightened only one of these hashes may exist.
- If we receive both the LMHash and NTHash we are able to crack 98.5 percent of passwords within ten minutes. We mark these as successfull.
- If we receive just the LMHash, we can decrypt the password, but not the case sensitivity. I.e. we will state the password as "abc", but the actuall password might be one of the following: abc,Abc,ABc,ABC,aBc,aBC,abC. These will be marked as "success-case" meaning we have succesfully cracked the password but not the case sensitivity. In these cases you would need to try manually every case combination, we cannot do this for you.
- If we receive just the NTHash, we cannot decrypt the password unless someone else has submitted previously the same password. These tend to be marked as failed instantly.
If an order is marked as failed, you may still find that the passwords you need are marked as "success-case" in which case the password has been recovered, but you will need to try every combination of case sensitivity. You may also see some passwords marked as "partial" which means we have partially discovered the password, but for those characters we are unsure about, we mark with question marks. These partial passwords may still be of some use in that if we display the password as "rainb?w" in most cases people can guess the actual password.