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Problem trying to reinstall windows SP
A friend's husband passed away and she is trying to gain access to his
laptop. She has been unable to guess his password and I offer to see if I could assist. She does not want to delete and files because he may have some important information on the laptop. For the same reason, she does not want to take the laptop to some repair location to resolve the problem. I changed the BIOS boot order to start with the CD/DVD and attempted to boot from the CD. However, we are still taken to the windows login as Administrator and Guest. I do not recall this happening when I have had to reinstall windows in the pass. Have I missed something? Any help would be appreciated. We are trying to reinstall windows overtop of the old installation. |
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Problem trying to reinstall windows SP
Mr Mike wrote:
A friend's husband passed away and she is trying to gain access to his laptop. She has been unable to guess his password and I offer to see if I could assist. She does not want to delete and files because he may have some important information on the laptop. For the same reason, she does not want to take the laptop to some repair location to resolve the problem. I changed the BIOS boot order to start with the CD/DVD and attempted to boot from the CD. However, we are still taken to the windows login as Administrator and Guest. I do not recall this happening when I have had to reinstall windows in the pass. Have I missed something? Any help would be appreciated. We are trying to reinstall windows overtop of the old installation. Please stop what you are doing. You are making it harder and increasing the chances that your friend will lose her husband's files. There is no reason to reinstall Windows because of a lost password. I'm assuming the password is a Windows one and not a BIOS one. For XP Home, simply boot the computer into Safe Mode by repeatedly tapping the F8 key as the computer is starting up. This will get you to the correct menu; use your Up arrow key to navigate as the mouse doesn't work here. Now you will be at the Welcome Screen and the normally hidden built-in Administrator account will be visible. Unless it was changed, the default password is a blank. Log into that account and go to the User Accounts applet in Control panel where you can then remove the password on her husband's account. For XP Pro, at the Welcome Screen press Ctrl-Alt-Del twice to get the classic logon box where you can type in "Administrator". It is less likely that the Administrator password is a blank, however. Otherwise, boot the computer with NTpasswd and change the Administrator password to a blank. Then you can log in and remove the husband's password. http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/ If any of this seems too difficult - and there is no shame in admitting this - then have your friend take the laptop to a professional computer repair shop (not your local version of BigStoreUSA). It is hard enough on her that her husband has died; you don't want her to lose the data too. Malke -- MS-MVP Windows User/Shell Elephant Boy Computers www.elephantboycomputers.com "Don't Panic" |
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