So yesterday I get a call from my Dad, who is with my Mom in Florida visiting family. Turns out my aunt lost/forgot the password on her laptop, and my Dad wondered if I could call her and talk her through how to recover her password.
First, my aunt has not much of a clue about technology. Recovering/resetting the password on a machine you have your hands on, if you have a little IT knowledge, isn’t all that hard. Telling someone a thousand miles away, who doesn’t have that knowledge how to do it…
Needless to say, I told him to tell her to take it to a local computer shop, and if they were clueless about it, to have the shop call me.
It did occur to me, however, that explaining the process might not be the worst thing ever.
Now I didn’t create any crazy process that’s unique or diferent, but I’ve used this process more than a few times. It was slightly simpler in the days when you could count on the machine to have a CD or DVD drive to boot to.
Bear in mind that whatever USB key you use for this process will be reformatted, so make sure to copy anything you want to retain elsewhere. Given the cost of USB keys, go buy a 4GB key for under $10, follow the process, label it and keep it forever.
In order to protect the copyrights of the original authors, I’m simply providing links to the appropriate pages.
http://4sysops.com/archives/build-a-bootable-windows-pe-3-0-usb-drive-with-rescue-tools-part-1/
http://4sysops.com/archives/free-ntpwedit-reset-windows-password/
