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Hash Decypter
You're just using it the wrong way, take a look at this http://www.dalhart.com/prof_scott/cs652/jacktheripper.ppt that was what I used to start using JTR (even though they stuffed the name up) Just remember, in their tutorial they say to type john in the command prompt when you are in the directory of JTR. DONT. You have to substitute john for the name of the exe file, in your case john-286, in my case john-386. Cracking hashes takes a while unless you have a wordlist, so I suggest you get a good one, or several that you can put together. Other than that, the tutorial is pretty straight forwards. If you can't get it at first, keep at it. JTR is the best out there.
Hope that helps :D