Windows security is provided by entries in the SAM file. The passwords are encoded by using a hashing method.
SAMinside can break these passwords but will only run under Windows. If you have one account that can be signed on to then SAMInside can be run against SAM, which resides in %systemroot%\WINNT\SYSTEM32\CONFIG. Where %systemroot% is the boot disk (usually C:).

If no passwords are known the both SAM and the required registry file SYSTEM need to be copied to another machine where Windows can be used. This means being able to boot an operating system from the A: drive and then transferring the above files to that system.
The following describes how to do that

1. Build a Windows 98 start up diskette. The start up diskette builds a virtual disk in memory. The default size is 2Mb, which is too small for our purposes, Edit CONFIG.SYS in the diskette, Look for line

   devicehigh=ramdrive.sys /E 2048

   change the value 2048 to 8196. This creates an 8Mb virtual disk.
2. On a second diskette place NTFSDOS.EXE, this is unpacked from NTFSDOS.ZIP. The startup diskette can only handle FAT or FAT32 files. Windows 2000 uses NTFS. This program, when run, will allow read access to NTFS disks.
3. Place on the second diskette the PACK directory, unzipped from the PACK.ZIP file, which contains PKZ. This program can zip directories to multi-volume diskettes.
4. Boot the diskette and, when the boot is complete, run NTFSDOS.
5. In the virtual disk (ramdrive) create a directoru called SYSTEM. Copy SAM and SYSTEM from %systemroot%\WINNT\SYSTEM32\CONFIG to this directory (SYSTEM) on the randrive.
6. Make a directory PACK on the ramdrive and copy the contents of PACK on the second diskette to this directory. Change the DOS load path with the following command path=c:\pack
7. Run PKZ to pach the directory SYSTEM on the ramdrive (usually disk C:)

   pkz /d system /za /s z:system

   This creates a file sysetm.zip that can span one or more diskettes, so 2 or 3 empty diskettes are needed.
8. Once complete, the diskettes can be taken to another Windows system that has PKZ in the PACK directory and the system.zip file unpacked with

   pkz /d system /za /r z:system

   A DOS screen will need to be opened in order to run PKZ.