Forgotten Password Syndrome is a sad affliction that hits most of us at some point. There is a cure -- which I'll detail in my next post -- but in the meantime, did you know that many Windows passwords are peekable?

I recently had a client with a sad case of FPS and was able to solve all her woes with a free download called Asterisk Logger. It's a simple app. Many password-requiring programs replace the screen display with asterisks; Asterisk Logger simply puts back the text!






There are a few limitations. Some applications don't store passwords behind the asterisks to increase security, amongst them Netscape 6.x, Windows 2000 dialup and network passwords, and user management tools in NT/2000/XP. It also can't reveal passwords in Internet Explorer web pages. For those you need AsterWin IE.

NirSoft also have a variety of other password recovery utilities including;

• Mail PassView - Recover passwords stored in Email clients (Outlook, Windows Live Mail, Thunderbird, and so on).
• MessenPass - Recover the passwords of 'Instant Messenger' applications.
• IE PassView - Recover the passwords of Internet Explorer.
• Dialupass - Recover VPN/RAS/Dialup passwords.
• Network Password Recovery - Recover Windows XP/Vista network passwords (Credentials file)

If you need heavy-duty password recovery, ElcomSoft have a range of heavy-duty cracking tools. They must be good because some years ago Adobe had one of their programmers arrested when he visited the US! Dmitry Skylarov and ElcomSoft were eventually found not guilty of all charges under the onerous US Digital Millennium Copyright Act.