Reformatting do I need to?

[ahtal68]

Havent used my dell desktop in a long while. Using vista home premium, password protected, now completely forgotten the password, no recovery disk. Dell says I have to reformat, sad to say have misplaced installation disk. Wish to know if it is possible to bypass the password thing or disable it somehow.

OR

if any kind soul who us willing to share either XP or Vista disk.

Thanks a bunch.

[kwchang]

I am totally against reformatting unless absolutely necessary...
These so-called computer technicians only know the easy way out and whenever possible, use the the biggest sledge-hammer to solve a simple problem ... imagine tearing down the whole house and rebuilding it just because you have lost the key to the front door !

In your situation, I would take the following options-

i) boot up in safe mode (in old windows systems, you hold the F8 key on bootup, for vista, it could be F2 or F12)
ii) go into administrator mode - usually there are no passwords ... if there is one and you have forgotten,then this does not work
iii) if you can get into administrator mode, then all your problems are solved - just get into the user you use to login and remove the password (admin has full access to all user settings)

If the above does not work, the you may want to recover any important data before reformatting the disk...
a) Remove that harddisk and make it a 2nd drive in another PC or get a external-drive casing and make it an external USB drive
b) Connect the drive to another PC/notebook and check to see if it is still functioning (and hence data is recoverable)
c) use a recovery program (the one I use is Recuva from Piriform) to get into the password controlled area and "recover" all the data you want - save it to another disk or thumb-drive
d) Once you have ensured that your data are saved, you can get back your disk by re-formatting it

Alternatively, search for an application that can bypass the password - that is one process that I have never done and I would like to know if anyone has any clue to bypassing the password access to the locked user area

[mlkok]

Try this: http://ophcrack.sourceforge.net/

It's a password cracker and should be able to help you recover your password.

[ahtal68]

I am totally against reformatting unless absolutely necessary...
These so-called computer technicians only know the easy way out and whenever possible, use the the biggest sledge-hammer to solve a simple problem ... imagine tearing down the whole house and rebuilding it just because you have lost the key to the front door !

In your situation, I would take the following options-

i) boot up in safe mode (in old windows systems, you hold the F8 key on bootup, for vista, it could be F2 or F12)
ii) go into administrator mode - usually there are no passwords ... if there is one and you have forgotten,then this does not work
iii) if you can get into administrator mode, then all your problems are solved - just get into the user you use to login and remove the password (admin has full access to all user settings)

If the above does not work, the you may want to recover any important data before reformatting the disk...
a) Remove that harddisk and make it a 2nd drive in another PC or get a external-drive casing and make it an external USB drive
b) Connect the drive to another PC/notebook and check to see if it is still functioning (and hence data is recoverable)
c) use a recovery program (the one I use is Recuva from Piriform) to get into the password controlled area and "recover" all the data you want - save it to another disk or thumb-drive
d) Once you have ensured that your data are saved, you can get back your disk by re-formatting it

Alternatively, search for an application that can bypass the password - that is one process that I have never done and I would like to know if anyone has any clue to bypassing the password access to the locked user area

Thanks Chang, I going to try to disable from admin mode. Let you know if it works. Otherwise will try the other steps and resort reformatting to last.

[ahtal68]

Try this: http://ophcrack.sourceforge.net/

It's a password cracker and should be able to help you recover your password.

Thanks, will try this as well, only thing is cant get onto the desktop without password disabled. How do I install or run the password cracker?

[kwchang]

Thanks, will try this as well, only thing is cant get onto the desktop without password disabled. How do I install or run the password cracker?

I believe the only way to do this is to use another computer while the affected harddisk is used as a 2nd or external drive like I described in a-b

[ahtal68]

Thanks a bunch Chang, steps i to iii worked. Thanks to mlkok too, downloaded the program for future use