Windows Vista Password

[GetAGrip]

My daughter has her whole life on her laptop in the form of videos, photos etc and needless to say, nope, there is no backup (at her age she should know better). The thing is, she went through a stage of keep changing her password, and now Windows won't accept her many tries as to what is the latest!
Can this password be overridden at all? Obviously, Windows says NO!
I appreciate no-one is going to walk her through how it would be done, but, if it is possible, then she can try and find a willing 'techy head' to transfer her files for her. If not, then she will have to format and re-install Windows, losing everything.

 

[martint235]

Try logging in as Administrator. Just enter that as a user name and then press enter instead of entering a password. If you did a bog standard install there is a chance the Admin account is still there.

I think there should also be an option to install Vista without losing data but it's a while since I played with Vista.

 

[lordloveaduck]

You can try to with command prompt.
1. Press F8 to enter Advanced Boot Options just before the Windows loading screen appears.
2. Choose Safe Mode with Command Prompt.
3. Log in with an administrator account when you can see the log on screen.
4. Type net user in the command prompt and then hit Enter. All the Windows account user names will be listed for you.
5. Type net user Helen 123 and hit Enter.
‘Helen’ is your locked Windows account user name. And ‘123’ is the new password you want to reset for the account.
If you cannot enter the safe mode, I’m afraid you have to create a password reset disk with a CD or USB drive as follows. Otherwise, reinstallation will be your only choice.

 

[GetAGrip]

There is no Administrator account - just hers and one for all others. Will look into re-installing without losing personal data. I suspect it's not going to be that simple . Thanks for your fast response

 

[martint235]

There is no Administrator account - just hers and one for all others. Will look into re-installing without losing personal data. I suspect it's not going to be that simple . Thanks for your fast response

Sorry if you know this already but the admin account won't show up in any list of accounts, it's just "there". That's why there's no password assigned to it in a standard install (a very weird idea that Microsoft should really be shot for).

 

[GetAGrip]

Sorry if you know this already but the admin account won't show up in any list of accounts, it's just "there". That's why there's no password assigned to it in a standard install (a very weird idea that Microsoft should really be shot for).

Ok, No, I didn't know that - thanks.

 

[GetAGrip]

You can try to with command prompt.
1. Press F8 to enter Advanced Boot Options just before the Windows loading screen appears.
2. Choose Safe Mode with Command Prompt.
3. Log in with an administrator account when you can see the log on screen.
4. Type net user in the command prompt and then hit Enter. All the Windows account user names will be listed for you.
5. Type net user Helen 123 and hit Enter.
‘Helen’ is your locked Windows account user name. And ‘123’ is the new password you want to reset for the account.
If you cannot enter the safe mode, I’m afraid you have to create a password reset disk with a CD or USB drive as follows. Otherwise, reinstallation will be your only choice.

Will follow these instructions when she gets home later this morning - thanks

 

[lordloveaduck]

You could reinstall on a different partition, then once that is installed go through the new partition to grab the old files then once that is done do a clean install.

 

[Mr Finch]

There are password cracking tools on the net. We use one that we have on CD that we boot to and it will tell us what the password is or enable us to change it, no reinstall required.

I will look for the name of it when I get back to the office for you.

 

[martint235]

You could reinstall on a different partition, then once that is installed go through the new partition to grab the old files then once that is done do a clean install.

This will require the partition to already be in existence though won't it? If you create a new partition, it will format the disc.

 

[lordloveaduck]

No it wont. If there is space on the disk you can easily create a partition without having to format the whole disk. You can also use disk recovery to grab any files and folders (you pick which type you want to grab) and save them on a hard drive then reinstall vista.

Just depends on what method is easier for the OP and if they want to take it to a shop and let them deal with it or if they want to try themselves.

 

[GetAGrip]

You can try to with command prompt.
1. Press F8 to enter Advanced Boot Options just before the Windows loading screen appears.
2. Choose Safe Mode with Command Prompt.
3. Log in with an administrator account when you can see the log on screen.
4. Type net user in the command prompt and then hit Enter. All the Windows account user names will be listed for you.
5. Type net user Helen 123 and hit Enter.
‘Helen’ is your locked Windows account user name. And ‘123’ is the new password you want to reset for the account.
If you cannot enter the safe mode, I’m afraid you have to create a password reset disk with a CD or USB drive as follows. Otherwise, reinstallation will be your only choice.

1. Yep
2. Yep
3. Only 2 box options - the locked account and a non admin account. How to log into an administrator account ?
4. Did this anyhow just to understand what to do.
5. Still got to do this
If you could explain no. 3 there may still be some hope for my sanity this weekend!! Thanks

 

[lordloveaduck]

Sorry. I am not on my PC at the moment. It was a link that i used to get back into my PC Vista/Linux. Will have a look when i get home.

 

[GetAGrip]

Ok lordloveaduck, thanks for your time and the same to martint235 and Mr Finch

 

[fossala]

Just put the Hard drive in a nother PC and transfer the files. I doubt you encrypted your hard drive so it will be easy. After you have retrived your files re install the OS.