Microsoft password

Supatramp

I'm running Win 10 on my pc, and have forgotten my password.  I've gone through the 3 questions and apparently my first pet's name is wrong, which is rather strange as I've only had 1 pet so I don't understand how that could be wrong!

Fortunately, since Covid, I've been using my laptop for work etc.

But how do I get into Microsoft?  It's asking me for a disc, but I don't have any disc

Help!.

TIA

cerebus

Easiest thing to do is to pull the hard drive , put it in an external caddy , pull of everything you want , stick it back in your pc and reinstall windows 

flaneurs_lobster

Supatramp said:

 I've gone through the 3 questions and apparently my first pet's name is wrong, which is rather strange as I've only had 1 pet so I don't understand how that could be wrong!

Is it case sensitive? ROVER or Rover or rover?

Supatramp

flaneurs_lobster said:

Supatramp said:

 I've gone through the 3 questions and apparently my first pet's name is wrong, which is rather strange as I've only had 1 pet so I don't understand how that could be wrong!

Is it case sensitive? ROVER or Rover or rover?

I don't think the answers to the questions are  case sensitive.

PHK

cerebus said:

Easiest thing to do is to pull the hard drive , put it in an external caddy , pull of everything you want , stick it back in your pc and reinstall windows 

Before doing this, please check whether the disc is encrypted. (I say this because when it asked for a disc it was probably the recovery key).

If it is encrypted and you follow the above advice you won't be able to use the drive even if you put it back in the PC. 

Supatramp

What frustrates me when I forget a password, is the fact that you don't get what/how the password should be made up.  That is whether it needs upper case, numbers, or special characters.

Quite often, when I go to reset a password, what is required will jog my memory and then let me remember my password.

On my laptop, I simply need a pin number, but that doesn't seem to apply on my pc.

halfamo

My son just did this for someone. He said he downloaded a small version of Linux, stuck it on a flash drive, booted from the flash drive and searched for the place windows keeps the password.  You probably need to get into bios to change to boot from flash drive but its quite easy. 

km1500

surprised it is kept in a special place and unencrypted.

still, that's MS for you I suppose

cerebus

km1500 said:

surprised it is kept in a special place and unencrypted.

still, that's MS for you I suppose

The password is heavily encrypted , there's no way his 'son'  broke it 

km1500

oh silly me ...

booneruk

cerebus said:

km1500 said:

surprised it is kept in a special place and unencrypted.

still, that's MS for you I suppose

The password is heavily encrypted , there's no way his 'son'  broke it 

Those linux tools allow you to reset the password rather than reveal what an existing password is. It's quite a technically challenging thing to get going though.

I wonder if the OP could try and log into their Microsoft account in a web browser of another computer, and then go through the "Forgotten password" or "Can't access this account?" functionality to set it again. Once done then retry logging into the troublesome PC.

https://account.microsoft.com/account/manage-my-account

Although I'd imagine the PC they can't login to would need to be connected to the internet.