I did the same thing on a server for a major department store chain in the '90s. I booted a Linux diskette and copied the SAM file to it. I also ran l0phtcrac

I did the same thing on a server for a major department store chain in the '90s. I booted a Linux diskette and copied the SAM file to it. I also ran l0phtcrack, or John the Ripper on a 486 (?) PC in my apartment. I think I bought a rainbow table and something else to expand the iterations it would use on the hashes. I let it run for over a week and had a couple of thousand clear passwords. This was for every store west of the Mississippi and included most of the "big-wigs" in our chain. I was going to send the information to our security people in another state but decided it probably wouldn't be a wise thing to do. I come across the HDD where I have this stuff archived every now and then and it makes me smile. This was also in the "Free Kevin" days.