Password problems Logging into Vista

Charlysays · 27 May 2009 at 19:09

My Friends 11yr old Daughter was fed up with her brother using her laptop so added a password to it. Unfortunately she either had Caps Lock on or has mispelt the password but now she can't log in.
It's an Acer laptop running Vista Basic and he has dumped it at mine in the hope I can somehow fix it. (told him I don't have a clue but he won't listen as I know about Pc's he says) Any Ideas guys??

lumpeh · 27 May 2009 at 19:22

Do you know the admin password? You can always get in via safe mode with it and reset the password on her account.

Pho · 27 May 2009 at 19:42

http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/

Charlysays · 27 May 2009 at 22:10

Pho said:
http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/

Tried this thanks but it never worked so ended up I just did a factory reset, with the permission of the owner I should add. Not sure their daughter will be too chuffed but she can look on it as a reminder of why she should be careful with passwords

theheyes · 28 May 2009 at 00:00

You could have salvaged the stuff even without the password but it's a bit late now.

In XP (by default) you could just safe mode boot into the local administrator account but as far as I know in Vista you can't do this unless you enable it - which is usually too late once you've forgotten the password to the only account on the system.

Charlysays · 28 May 2009 at 11:41

Tried it in safe mode and it never worked so I guess it wasn't enabled then? Was actually going to just take out the HD and stick it in a caddy and copy the documents from there but was told there was nothing of importance in it. (Try telling that to an 11 year old who has probs amassed lots of Hannah Montana pics and Vids lol)