I need to recover the administrator password for Windows 7 running under Parallels Desktop. I have an ophcrack live CD, which I downloaded and burned from the ophcrack site but cannot get the Parallels VM to start up from the disk.

Anybody have experience recovering passwords on Parallels Windows VMs? Is there another route? I have the whole HD cloned on a FW drive, if that might help...

can you run it in the vm and specify a password store?

Don't think so. Don't have a great understanding of Parallels (or, in fact, of OSX, Windows, Unix....). I have only Windows 7 as VM. I can specify the boot order, so that it starts from CD, for example, but I believe the ophcrack CD boots a slim Linux program and then analyzes the Windows files to recover passwords and I am not sure Parallels would allow this.

What you are suggesting would work if:

a. your Parallels instance was on a physical partition rather than in a file, which it probably is

or,

b. you clone your Parallels virtual disk to a physical partition.

You might find it easier to backup your data files, then reformat the Parallels installation and reinstall your workspace with a new Administrator login.

I recommend that you get a password program like 1Password to store your passwords in. It helps, especially if you are like me and forget passwords when you don't use them regularly.