Children have added a password to their laptop - and lost it!!!

comping_cat

Hopefully someone can help - i went to make sure the parental controls were set up on the childrens laptop, as we now have wireless internet and they know how to log on! - and found they have managed to make their account the administator, and its password protected. of course, they have now lost the password, so i am unable to set up the protection i want to have on it.

Is there a way of finding the password/re setting it? Im also im planning on deleting their file, so they will need to go through me instead!

Rev

Have you tried starting up in safe mode? You can usually log in as the administrator and disable user passwords from there. I believe you press F8 or F12 (I could be wrong) during startup and it'll give you the option to start windows normally or start in safe mode. Pick safe mode and it'll list the user account plus 'Administrator'. In the Administrator accound you can go into control panel and remove the user accounts passwords.

fwor

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

Although originally written for NT it works with XP and Vista. I've used it successfully myself.

comping_cat

Not sure about safe mode - have tried both f8 and f12, but nothing happened.

Found in the help menu about resetting the password, its says about creating a disk, which im trying to do - but not being very successful at the moment!!!

comping_cat

Cant create a disk, you need the password to do it!!! Will have a look at the information fwor has posted!!!

Lokolo

F8 should work.

When you turn your computer on keep tapping the F8 key until your computer started bleeping at you. That should then give you the option of safe mode.

comping_cat

Managed to start it in safe mode, but didnt give me the option of the user accounts, just listed loads of things, then took me to the start page.

On windows help. it basically says without the password, we cant remove anything - and the only thing to do is cancel and re load windows completely!

Need to get them to find the windows disk now then, but no idea where that is either!! (not sure about the prog fwor posted - im not very computer literate and its a bit complicated for me!!)

CLLC

I wish i could help but i thought maybe you could try contacting microsoft themselves?

fwor

It's not complicated! Just download the file

http://home.eunet.no/pnordahl/ntpasswd/cd080526.zip

unzip it, burn it to a CD as an ISO file, then boot the PC from it and follow the instructions.

[as loaner says that should be "as an ISO image", not file. It's an option in all of the popular CD burning programs such as Roxio, Nero, etc.]

comping_cat

Ok, ive downloaded both those programs - so sorry to be thick - but what do i do now? Ive never burned a CD before!!!!

cheekyweegit

Just out of curiosity do you or any other person have an account on the laptop which has administrator priviledges?

If so you can reset the password from there for any of the accounts.

Go to...

Start > Control Panel > User Accounts > Change Password.

I'd also recommend changing their account to limited in there too.

Hope this helps.

Oh have you also just tried typing "Admin" without the quotes in the login box with no password. Sometimes this works and will bring up the admin account it it's not passworded off.

Good luck.