Help re-setting win8.1 login password

yanc

yanc

yanc

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10 Jun 2020
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Hi, Im trying to help a OAP neighbour who has a win8.1 pc that he hasnt used for for a couple of yrs and has now forgotten the password. The shop he brought it off configured it so its also tied to his email account for which he's also forgotten the password. He has lots of old slide photos that he's scanned stored on the pc so I dont want to wipe it.

I have booted from a win8.1 ISO boot DVD and have tried the normal cmd line changes, to try and get the "ease of access" button to display the cmd window and then it would enable me to use the "net user command" but strangley there was no Utilman.exe file in the system32 folder?

So if I rename the cmd.exe to Utilman.exe all seem fine until I reboot the pc. Windows then decides it needs to repair itself and then I find the "ease of access" button still doesnt display the cmd window and when I reboot with the ISO boot DVD and check the the Utilman.exe, I find its missing, so its probably been deleted by the windows repair!

Any help would be most appreciated as he's desperate to view his slides.
Once I get access will probably upgrade it to win10 and remove the password login!

Thanks
 
It's not the ease of access button to get CMD, you press shift a bunch of times.
 
Not heard of that?
Is that once the logon screen has appeared then or during boot?
Tried both and had no effect?
Thanks
 
Once the login screen appears.

I have never heard of it not working on Windows 8 once you copy CMD.exe over utilman.exe

I wonder if there is an update that mitigates this hack now.

Worst case, copy his data off the drive then install windows 10.
 
Sorry tried that during boot and once the login screen appears and has no effect.
As I say everytime I copy CMD.exe over utilman.exe and reboot it does a repair and after it hasnt worked I go back and check and find utilman is deleted?

Wondered if there was anything else to try..?
 
Yeah, yank the drive out and plug it in with a caddy to another device to copy the stuff off.

Alternatively Hirens Boot CD/USB and reset the password.
 
Tried the latest Hirens BootCD PE x64 (v1.0.1) and its seemed to work ok and let you reset the password, but when you reboot you get:-
"You cant sign into you device right now. Go to account.live to fix the problem or try the last password you used on this device".

Is this because the logon password is also tied to an email account?
Is there a way around this?
 
I've never not had the utilman / cmd trick work on a machine.

When you are in the boot disk cmd you could check it hasn't assigned the actual windows drive as some random letter.

These tools should let you create a local account still.

Failing all the above it'll be taking the drive out - backup then re-install as others have said.
 
Hi, magaged to sort things in the end by removing the HDD, copying files and reinstalling win10.
Strange why utilman/cmd line wouldnt work, just seemed like windows deleted the changes after a reboot.
Also Hirens and pogostick didnt work.
Hirens let you change the p/w, but only to find it hadnt after a re-boot?
And pogostick always thought the pc was hibernating so could never proceed?

Anyway all sorted now and thanks for the help...
 
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