Vista Password Rcovery - booting up

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Hope everyone had a good chrstmas


ok, lets get started

Today ive had someone bring to me their daughters brand spanking new pink laptop, installed with windows vista basic. The kid has forgotten her password to log in, no problem i thought, safe mode, admin, change password.

Except admin dosnt come up when you try to boot up in safe mode, just the users name, and this stil prompts you for a password.

She hasnt created a password reset disk, so afterlooking around an seeing plenty of "ooooh you will have to completely reinstall vista" topcs, im just wondering is there another way.

Its a brand new laptop and i dont really want to reinstall vista.......

 

Have you tried the double CTL-ALT-DEL trick to get the classic login screen? Works in XP, no idea if it works in Vista.

Harry.

 

Having done some digging, it appears that the Admin account is normaly disabled on Vista Home versions (and possibly others).

I now see why so many people say 'restore from the restore disks' as nearly all the tricks in XP to get round this seem to have been blocked.

Harry.

 

Hey - you could always use the advice given last week and take the opportunity to upgrade to XP whilst you do it!

Seriously though, try this - download it and boot from a USB key.

 

I meant to reply same day to this, but with parents coming for boxing day, wife telling me to "stop playing" and the dog sat with lead in mouth.........i kinda forgot

Anyway, Well not really a resolution to this, but ive got it sorted anyhow.

At a later time, i was provided with a password, which the girl thought it might be, it wasnt but after a bit of determination and about 500 combinations of the password given I managed to log in, and changed it to something which is easier for her

advised them to make a password hint, and backup their password.


I think its a bit mental of MS to basically say, if you dont do anything to keep your password safe, your screwed and have to reinstall everything.

Now i bet the majority of casual users and techies, wont be bothered to create a password reset disk. I read elsewhere that the password create thing is specific to each user account, which seems a bit mental


I can understand security risks etc, but surely this type of lockdown should be specific to the higher end versions of Vista, not the casual home users, who more and likely WONT backup their password



Non MS OS sysetms should use that issue to their advantage.......get vista, forget your password....and erm potentially lose data

mental

 

I agree the casual home user will not see the benefits of creating backup disks and password hints, this is mainly out of ignorance and not understanding the technology.

I am forever getting questions from work collegues like 'why can't I have two firewalls?, is not not better? and my fan in my computer is grinding what is it?' type of questions. When you explain the answers they seem to switch off because it does not interest them even though they want the answer.

The casual home user just wants a pc to work and thats it, but its not as simple as that is what I say to them.

One of them today said he got new antivirus software called bullgaurd and its found 58 potential serious intrusions on his pc, for some reason his nortons wasn't flaggin any of them up and his computer is loading slowly. I got him to check the quarantine folder in his Nortons and there were 53 viruses in it, I had to explain to him that he is supposed get rid of them not let them sit there

 

I recommend them buying an Apple MAC.

Kraven

 

You can prevent this sort of problem from happening by doing one of three things...

1) Enabling the Administrator account
2) Creating an extra user account with admin privileges
3) Most importantly... don't forget your password.

Hopefully, the daughter has learned her lesson.

 

I was going to say, doesn't something like BartPE or SuperwinPE have a locksmith application? I know that you can those for free of the web.