Forgotten Admin Password reset

[Deano]

Hi, I had started reconfiguring and cleaning my wife's laptop up to
give to a relative. But, they got a newer one, and my wife wants this
one to use again. In the cleaning process, we somehow ended up with her
having an admin account with a password that we can't remember. This
system is a Win7 that was upgraded (legally) from Vista. Anything I
could do to perform a total re-install, or even erase the password
protected account? I am a bit rusty with PC's these days, as I have
been tinkering more with Android devices of late. ;-Deano

 

[Ken1943]

Hi, I had started reconfiguring and cleaning my wife's laptop up to
give to a relative. But, they got a newer one, and my wife wants this
one to use again. In the cleaning process, we somehow ended up with her
having an admin account with a password that we can't remember. This
system is a Win7 that was upgraded (legally) from Vista. Anything I
could do to perform a total re-install, or even erase the password
protected account? I am a bit rusty with PC's these days, as I have
been tinkering more with Android devices of late. ;-Deano

Try this site for some tools.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20091105232226AAoXBeL


KenW

 

[FromTheRafters]

Hi, I had started reconfiguring and cleaning my wife's laptop up to
give to a relative. But, they got a newer one, and my wife wants this
one to use again. In the cleaning process, we somehow ended up with her
having an admin account with a password that we can't remember. This
system is a Win7 that was upgraded (legally) from Vista. Anything I
could do to perform a total re-install, or even erase the password
protected account? I am a bit rusty with PC's these days, as I have
been tinkering more with Android devices of late. ;-Deano

You might be able to get a safe mode 'Real' or 'Built in
"Administrator" account to create a new 'administrator' account and
then boot to regular mode and delete the unwanted one.

You *should* be able to get the "Real Administrator" account by deleting
or demoting the undesired one - the OS is *supposed to* automatically
unhide the "Real Admin" account in "Safe Mode" when it finds that there
are no 'administrator' (note the small 'a') accounts available.

Be advised, when Vista came out, this method backfired and caused the
user to be almost completely locked out as a result. I believe that
they fixed that little problem (asp.net account counted as an admin
account and yet it was inaccesible to the user) by now.

 

[ray carter]

Hi, I had started reconfiguring and cleaning my wife's laptop up to give
to a relative. But, they got a newer one, and my wife wants this one to
use again. In the cleaning process, we somehow ended up with her having
an admin account with a password that we can't remember. This system is
a Win7 that was upgraded (legally) from Vista. Anything I could do to
perform a total re-install, or even erase the password protected
account? I am a bit rusty with PC's these days, as I have been
tinkering more with Android devices of late. ;-Deano

One of the easiest is via a Linux Live CD/DVD such as Knoppix - simply
use the chntpw command after booting Linux.

 

[pjp]

Hi, I had started reconfiguring and cleaning my wife's laptop up to
give to a relative. But, they got a newer one, and my wife wants this
one to use again. In the cleaning process, we somehow ended up with her
having an admin account with a password that we can't remember. This
system is a Win7 that was upgraded (legally) from Vista. Anything I
could do to perform a total re-install, or even erase the password
protected account? I am a bit rusty with PC's these days, as I have
been tinkering more with Android devices of late. ;-Deano

Seems to me there's some "live" Linus distro has a tool on it to reset
Windows admin's password.