So as the resident tech support for my family, my gf and her family I get first look at all new PCs and laptops and last night I broke my gf's new lappy within 30min Running through the Win 7 first time setup and it asks for a password so I enter her usual PC one, a strong 8 digit password, the reminder and setup continues on its merry way. I install office, the updates and have a quick poke around and restart as asked. Post reboot, Win7 is asking for a password to login so I dutifully enter the one i've set up and no, it's wrong, so I try entering it again and again and again. The time is now 2230 and I feel like a dick, so time for some googlefu and I find that there are ways of resetting lost windows passwords, though most dont work on post XP systems (yea for M$ actually improving security ) And the ISOs of the programmes that look like they might work cost money to actually make them work. Can anyone help, otherwise its gonna be a reformat with my Win7 disc as the lappy came with no discs what so ever. TLDR: I've "lost" the password for my gf's new win7 lappy and need a way to get it back or reset it.
Maybe a silly question, but you didn't have Caps Lock/Num Lock set to the alternative of what you tried did you?
Tried that, and its many combination, no caps, all caps, caps 1st letter (as it should be) all caps bar 1st letter, no joy.
Assuming no data is on the drive, you could just start the Windows 7 setup routine like you did the first time and reinstall.
Who is the laptop made by? If you didnt get any disks with it, should have a recovery/restore partition which will save you using your Win7 disk/product key.
boot in safe mode and log on as admin then create a new user account for GF with right pasword, delete old one
Afraid i can't remember it now but if it jogs anyone elses memory i'm thinking of an open source program you booted it as a live cd/usb and it performed a registry hack whcih made the system let you in if you entered a blank password. it worked on Linux too.
UBDC, not sure about compatibility with 7. Worked fine for Vista and Server 2008 though. It cant actually change the password, only set it to blank so remember that.
Thanks guys, I hope one of these solutions works. From my understanding server 08 is built on the same architecture as Win 7 so fingers crossed. And as you can tell by now I work on this principle. The lappy in question is a Lenovo G550, and I just found out the reason it came with no disc is because laptops direct wanted £15 for recovery discs, which I assumed would be free.
Actually 2008 uses Vista code. You can make those for free... after letting the OS boot for first time. Though thats kinda iffy in this case.
And now I know And I shall be doing once I have access to the system again, but atm its an expensive paperweight.
I know, but its a matter of trust on this forum, we all act like complete delinquents in a certain thread but the understanding is that we're not and that this is a genuine problem, which it is. EDIT: The youtube link worked, the lappy boots now, thank you all so much.
There are people who would do such a thing. However I seriously doubt that an average thief bothers with password cracking, more like "ooo shiny" and he'll quickly convert it to cash or something else. Also guides on this subject are quite common.
This may help you.The efficient way for people who have lost their windows password. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRpw9ygSEys
