Fixing the Nephew's Laptop

Kintarō Hattori

Hey Folks,

Just looking for a bit of guidance on this. My nephew claims that his steam account was hacked and seemingly his laptop as well. While I'm somewhat dubious about either it seems that in the panic he can't log into his laptop. The password has been changed and either he doesn't know it or can't remember it.

The reason I'm on here looking for advice is that the last time I reinstalled Windows it was a copy of Windows 7 which came on a disk! Does Windows 10 get set aside in a partition on a laptop these days? What's the best way to go about getting past his password issue- creating a boot disk on a flash drive and trying to get in via safe mode to disable passwords?

Many thanks.

bren2002

Linux boot CD, copy off anything needed and reinstall would be my approach

Xterminator

Hi Op

It sounds like there is a chance you are handling stolen goods. just in case you didnt consider that.

there is a tool called hyrens cd. use it to reset an admin password , either his or the built in account. there are youtube tutorials if you struggle with the good documentation. it doesn't require a rebuild at all.

re steam, he can log into the webportal and reset his password/ perform account recovery. you probably wont need to help with that step. not usually a windows 10 dvd with laptops, i ean a lit of them don't even ship with optical drives anymore! so usual,y you would boot into recovery partition but in this case, for the problem - unknown password, its not required.

PS id put a copy of malwarebytes on to the cd/usb drive you use for hyrens, and scan for malware too as a sensible step.

Kintarō Hattori

Xterminator wrote: »

Hi Op

It sounds like there is a chance you are handling stolen goods. just in case you didnt consider that.

there is a tool called hyrens cd. use it to reset an admin password , either his or the built in account. there are youtube tutorials if you struggle with the good documentation. it doesn't require a rebuild at all.

re steam, he can log into the webportal and reset his password/ perform account recovery. you probably wont need to help with that step. not usually a windows 10 dvd with laptops, i ean a lit of them don't even ship with optical drives anymore! so usual,y you would boot into recovery partition but in this case, for the problem - unknown password, its not required.

PS id put a copy of malwarebytes on to the cd/usb drive you use for hyrens, and scan for malware too as a sensible step.

It's absolutely not stolen. My sister bought it for him from Harvey Norman... I came on Boards at the time looking for some advice.


Many thanks for the info outlined above- I'll give it a go over the weekend.

Xterminator

one last piece of advice.

when you finished, leave an administrator account enabled, that you know the password to. That way any future troubleshooting, password resets etc are easier.

I usually setup a new admin account and leave administrator disabled, with a complex password that doesn't expire. Its a little more secure.

To reset password

Boot Linux live CD
Navigate to the windows Partiton
Navigate to the "C:/Windows/System32" folder

Rename Utilman.exe to Utilman_bkup.exe

Copy and paste cmd.exe

Rename the copied cmd.exe to Utilman.exe

Reboot and back into windows

On log on screen where it asks for password.
Navigate to the bottom left hand screen, there is an icon called "ease of access" click on this.

You will now see an elevated cmd prompt instead.

Type "net user"

This will list all users.

To change the password of the user in question, ie "Joe"

Type "net user Joe NewPassword"

Close cmd prompt.

On windows log on screen, enter "NewPassword" for Joe.

And you're in.

Kintarō Hattori

l only got time to start looking at this properly today and it seemed relatively straight forward as having been mentioned, there are loads of YouTube videos to help you out. But of course things are never that easy and I can't see a handy answer to the probably straightforward issue I'm having.

Basically Hiren's is loading into a graphical interface rather than the DOS interface everyone else seems to be using. As a result I don't have the nifty little menu that all the YouTube clips show.

Any ideas?

Ignore the above. I went and loaded an older version of the program. When it asks me to select the partition where Windows is it seems to always list just the USB key? When it comes to the path about the registry it doesn't seem to know where that is or to load anything from it. When I select password reset it just throws me back to selecting a partition.

niallb

Kintarō Hattori wrote: »

...
Ignore the above. I went and loaded an older version of the program....

Try the newer version again - that one may bot support Windows 10 password reset.

While the menu may not look the same in the GUI, the logic and names will be very similar. Take a look at the menus that are available to you.
By all means note down what you think might work and confirm here before you pull the trigger, but if that disk is only seeing itself as a valid system this is one possible reason. Let people know which version of Hirens you booted in each case.