Truecrypt question.

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Hey guys,

A friend of mine installed truecrypt on his Dad's laptop last year and now they they've both lost the password...

I know there's no quick/easy way of recovering the password, but is there a way of simply formatting the drive and just starting over? I've never used truecrypt myself, but as far as can remember the login prompt comes up before the disk even boots...

They're not worried about the loss of data, they just want to be able to use the laptop again.

Any thoughts?

Cheers!
 
From what I can remember though, once you start the computer truecrypt is the first thing that loads, even before the bios screen - could that be right?
 
Just install Windows normally and delete/wipe partitions as you do.

This. TrueCrypt mounts when you start Windows and asks for your password before anything happens. When booting from the Windows install disc the encrypted partition doesn't get mounted, so gets nuked just like a non-encrypted disk.

If you choose to use it again, I would keep track of your password. Make it something easy to remember but not easy to guess.
 
Hit escape at the truecrypt boot loader and it will load up the new O/S as normal assuming you just fomatted the drive and installed again via the Windows DVD on the old encrypted drive. You can then install trucrypt and remove the boot loader through one of its menu's. Other method is to low level format the drive but that can take ages and not necessary.
 
Hit escape at the truecrypt boot loader and it will load up the new O/S as normal assuming you just fomatted the drive and installed again via the Windows DVD on the old encrypted drive. You can then install trucrypt and remove the boot loader through one of its menu's. Other method is to low level format the drive but that can take ages and not necessary.

You don't need to do any of that..
 
TruCrypt is installed on the boot sector of the hard drive so formatting it will wipe it out, as people have said it's not possible for it to load before the point of booting the drive.
 
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