Administrator privileges

omgitsdavie · 23 Apr 2018 at 14:42

Good afternoon guys. Despite how dodgy this may sound, I'm going to ask anyway..

A lady in my college class has purchased a laptop from her old place of work and been left for 12+ months. All the laptops were configured with an administrator password which she was not given when she left. shes got to a point now where things like anti-virus software has ran out, she cant open some PDFs ( a strange one?) and updates won't install without the administrator password. She has contacted her previous employer who has refused to give her the password. Is there any way to force them to give it up? Or will she have to buy another windows key and perform a fresh install?

PiKe · 23 Apr 2018 at 14:44

This works https://www.infopackets.com/news/9483/how-reset-any-password-windows-vista-7-8-10

Basically you replace untilman.exe with cmd.exe. so when you get to the login screen, you press shift a bunch of times, and instead of accessibility manager popping up you get a command prompt.

You then type net user her_username new_password

Don't forget to copy utilman back afterwards.

Raumarik · 23 Apr 2018 at 21:16

Could potentially extract the license key and do a fresh install at some point too. Magical jelly bean will probably still turn up the key.

Orcvader · 23 Apr 2018 at 22:39

Any idea what version of Windows it is? If it's 10 home/pro then you won't even need a licence key, it should automatically reactivate itself as soon as it has access to the internet.

omgitsdavie · 24 Apr 2018 at 12:07

Raumarik said:
Could potentially extract the license key and do a fresh install at some point too. Magical jelly bean will probably still turn up the key.

Tried magical jelly bean - needed the admin password to run the exe

Orcvader said:
Any idea what version of Windows it is? If it's 10 home/pro then you won't even need a licence key, it should automatically reactivate itself as soon as it has access to the internet.

Windows 10 pro - do you mean I could just do a fresh install from USB and MS will recognise the hardware and auto-activate it when it connects to the internet?

PiKe · 24 Apr 2018 at 12:20

My method works, so why are you ignoring it?

Orcvader · 24 Apr 2018 at 12:36

omgitsdavie said:
Windows 10 pro - do you mean I could just do a fresh install from USB and MS will recognise the hardware and auto-activate it when it connects to the internet?

Yup. If you want to be on the safe side, you could always try it with a spare hard drive first and see if it activates.

Talasour · 24 Apr 2018 at 12:38

I mean isn't the point of an administrator password is that you can't get around it?

You might have to reinstall the OS but try the fix PiKe suggested first.

varkanoid · 24 Apr 2018 at 14:24

omgitsdavie said:
Good afternoon guys. Despite how dodgy this may sound, I'm going to ask anyway..

A lady in my college class has purchased a laptop from her old place of work and been left for 12+ months. All the laptops were configured with an administrator password which she was not given when she left. shes got to a point now where things like anti-virus software has ran out, she cant open some PDFs ( a strange one?) and updates won't install without the administrator password. She has contacted her previous employer who has refused to give her the password. Is there any way to force them to give it up? Or will she have to buy another windows key and perform a fresh install?

I will send you a trust message on how to get round this. - actually you are not setup for trust. Setup your trust and I will tell you how its easier than the method above.

PiKe · 24 Apr 2018 at 19:09

Talasour said:
I mean isn't the point of an administrator password is that you can't get around it?

You might have to reinstall the OS but try the fix PiKe suggested first.

It is the point, but the easy access trick has existed since windows 7 and still exists today just as long as the administrator account isn't tied to a Microsoft account.

Raumarik · 24 Apr 2018 at 19:45

^^ Even before that there have been ways around it.

If you have physical access to an unencrypted PC you generally have access to the data via live linux CDs anyway

Nanobot · 25 Apr 2018 at 14:58

If you have a SATA to USB adapter / external USB enclosure or even add the laptop HDD as a slave drive on another computer, you could run Magic Jelly Bean against the slave HDD's Windows folder and it will be able to read the key.
If not, there are boot discs available that will let you reset the Admin password to blank.

Daaaavvveee · 25 Apr 2018 at 15:03

PiKe said:
This works https://www.infopackets.com/news/9483/how-reset-any-password-windows-vista-7-8-10

Basically you replace untilman.exe with cmd.exe. so when you get to the login screen, you press shift a bunch of times, and instead of accessibility manager popping up you get a command prompt.

You then type net user her_username new_password

Don't forget to copy utilman back afterwards.

Done this a few times on Servers as well as workstations

Its my fav trick