Ok, recently, i made a complete backup of a hard drive and then wiped it out and reinstalled everything.  Is it possible for me to recover saved MSN and AIM passwords from the backup?  I know its possible on a running system and i have done it before, but can I recover the passwords from a backup?

i just that about AIM... i at least need the MSN password if possible, but i need a program that can read from a registry in a different folder and unencode the MSN password...

It might be under “PASSWORD.NET”
You should be able to find this by searching the registry.

If you type “control userpasswords2” in RUN, go to the ADVANCE tad and click MANAGE PASSWORDS, under PROPERTIES, it might be there.

Mabe it's just me, but doesn't AIM and MSN have forgotten password features? You just click a link and answer a secret question.

Why can't you? Just wondering.

Oh I see. My syster does the same thing with her passwords. She saves it as auto-logon and forgets her password when she needs it.
So you forgot the password to your e-mail address too, I'm guessing. If it's an ISP e-mail address, e.g.: AOL, I think you can call them, then they can reset your e-mail/user ID password. I'm not sure exactly how they do it though.

Sorry, but I have no more ideas. 
Hopefully you'll know what to do in the future though. About secret questions, that is.  ;)

I would have to say yes.  IT IS POSSIBLE but you would have to speak with a moderator in order to properly and (MOST IMPORTANTLY) legal way to recover lost passwords.  Despite the fac of constant INTERNET hackers out there, I highly doubt that you would have ANY trouble retrieveing your lost or *sorry to say* STOLEN password(s)  Hopefully, its not more than  2 or 3 passwords because if you ask me, honestly having more than 2 or 3 passwords WOULD be hard to remember.