FOrgotten PW, Admin account

MiM

Not very clever but I was trying to wipe laptop to sell, deleted user accounts and added Admin account. Cannot for life of me remember the new password.

I've seen some paid for software to recover but is there an alternative?

Thanks

somersethillbilly

Take a look here.

http://pogostick.net/~pnh/ntpasswd/

John_Gray

Another vote for this product - I've used it about half a dozen times recently. Just read the documentation, especially about Encrypted File System (if you have these, don't use it). Make sure that you can boot either from the CD or the USB Flash Drive which you create, and Don't Panic - the defaults are usually what you want.

GunJack

hiren's bootCD, and use the offline NTPassword edtor to remove the password completely

NiftyDigits

Factory Restore?

MiM

It's got worse - I burned the disk but was struggling to get the laptop to boot form disk.

I tried various things, ended up setting up a new BIOS password and before I knew it I seem to have...deleted the operating system.

I clicked "Sanitize" and aborted when I realised this wasn't good. Now I'm getting a message saying "BootDevice not found - Please install an operating system on your hard disk".

Any ideas?

fenlander_uk

Factory Restore is sounding better and better as an option - if it's available. Otherwise, wait a bit and the linux boys will be round with a solution.