Vista Admin Password issue

Buz

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My daughter has a 12 month old Advent Laptop running Vista.
2 accounts, Admin and guest.
She has forgotten the admin passoword or has entered an incorrect one too many times!
Any idea how to reset it?


I was thinking of re-booting to instal disk but there isnt one with it :blast
 
there is a facility to make password reset disk in the user account section of the vista control panel but I am guessing that she does not have one for the administrator account and it is now too late to make one.

I have never tried it and according to the microsoft forums it can't be done but there is "allegedly" a programme that will reset a password.

http://pogostick.net/~pnh/ntpasswd/

It looks pretty scarey unless you are comfortable dealing with DOS prompts but as far as I can see if it did muck the whole thing up you are only where you are now, ie. looking at a complete re-installation.

There will be other password reset utilities out there and a google search will lead you too them but I have no experience of anybody that has tried any of them.

You may find if there is no recovery disk that it is on a hidden partition on the hard drive. My old Advent had a recovery mode you could enter during the boot up process. Switch on the laptop and as soon as it start to boot press the F8 key repeatedly. It should stop booting and you are presented with a list of options, one of which may be "restore operating system" or something similar.

If she can access any important data using the guest account get that backed up to an external hard drive before trying anything.

Also wait for a few more replies on here hopefully from somebody who knows a lot more about operating systems then I do.
 
Do a google search on l0phtcrack. Used this before with XP systems and it just works. Boot into it from a CD and wait.
Note, you may need to wait a long time depending on the strenth of the password.
 
You don't actually need to crack the password ... what you need is a boot CD that gives you the option to "reset SAM accounts" ...
- Download an ISO (there is some dodgy shite out there so beware when searching)
- make a boot CD
- boot off CD
- follow prompts
- reset password
- log into PC as administrator with a blank password
- jobs a good un


We sometimes get XP machines delivered with random passwords set that have been forgotten :blast- this process has saved a lot of effort
 
I reached this post from Google and tried NT Password and BootCD. The problem is that my computer can't boot from the disk made by the program.
 
You don't actually need to reset the password ... what you need is a boot CD that gives you the option to "reset SAM accounts" ...
- Download an ISO (there is some dodgy shite out there so beware when searching)
- make a boot CD
- boot off CD
- follow prompts
- reset password
- log into PC as administrator with a blank password
- jobs a good un


We sometimes get XP machines delivered with random passwords set that have been forgotten :blast- this process has saved a lot of effort

One more tip, please kindly disable UEFI in BIOS settings or you can't boot from CD or USB
 
12 months old and Vista is a strange combination. Do you mean 12 years old? 12 months ago it would have been sold with Windows 10.

If you end up reinstalling Vista I have a genuine Microsoft install disc from which it should be possible to create a bootable USB stick. Vista install disks seem to include all versions unlike Windows 7.
 
12 months old and Vista is a strange combination. Do you mean 12 years old? 12 months ago it would have been sold with Windows 10.

If you end up reinstalling Vista I have a genuine Microsoft install disc from which it should be possible to create a bootable USB stick. Vista install disks seem to include all versions unlike Windows 7.

What he means is that 12 months old :jager, but i don't like to reinstall Vista ,we have lots of way to bypass Windows 7 login passowrd to access computer again , unless, you have some advanced computer skills , and you won't fail, otherwise, it's a disaster
 


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