a friend of mine had a virus and he used System Restore to restore back before the virus was there, and apparently the password changed too, and he simply can't remember the password that was before...

is there any way to recover this password without formatting and re-installing the operating system? (has no cds)

i tried to google it, but all the results i find are how to do it, if the computer is turned on, and you're logged into 1 specific user.