Ex put password on my pc - help!

Goffie

I don't know if this will be frowned upon here but..

my ex nastily left a parting present of putting a password on the home Dell pc, effectively blocking me from using it at all. I bought it, he used it freely and it never had a password, now I can't get at my docs or pics etc.

Is there anyway of getting around this? I need to be able to get at my stuff and no way will he tell me what the password is. I've had a guy out to fix it before when it was visited by a virus, he knows me and knows it is mine - do you think he would be able to help/would do it if he could?

Cheers

Hank Scorpio

Theres some useful stuff here you could try

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/321305

yoyo

Hit [f8] button as your pc is booting up, do this repeatively, once done you will get a menu, scroll up to "Safe Mode" and wait, you will then see a screen with your computer username and should see a option called "Admininstrator" aswell, choose Administrator and if asked for a password click ok (Usually this password is blank, if not you must have setup a password for it during the first system setup), if you get in ok go into start>control panel and choose users & accounts, select your user account name and choose "Remove password", once done restart the computer and you should be able to access your account without password as normal

Nick

Overheal

Is this a Windows Login password or a Computer Startup password?

The Windows Login Password is a little trickier. edit: actually yoyo pretty much just covered that.

For the Computer Startup Password you need to follow these instructions to reset it. You will not lose any data doing this, so dont worry.

The jumper they are talking about should look just like this Yellow One here



Just pull it up, move it into the other position [oo]o from o[oo].

Or you can see if your PC has a backdoor Bios password. Check this list

witnessmenow

Presuming its a windows password, ophcrack is what you want

Goffie

Thanks a mil, all!
Its the Windows password, not the Computer Startup Password.

Yoyo - I'll try what you suggest and post if it works - cheers!!

witnessmenow - what is ophcrack? Totally clueless about this stuff but will try anything!

Goffie

Thank you thank you thank you, Nick!!!

It worked like a dream, I have my pc back!

One last question, could he have hacked into my laptop using that method? For snooping purposes...I only got it a few months ago and he always grumbled that it had a password on it but I needed one on it for work and wasn't about to give it to him.

the_syco

If he did, the password would have been deleted, or changed. Have you ever turned it on, only to find out that there was no password?

Goffie

No, there was never a problem with the password on the laptop - thanks for that, it's good to know!

yoyo

Goffie wrote: »

Thank you thank you thank you, Nick!!!

It worked like a dream, I have my pc back!

One last question, could he have hacked into my laptop using that method? For snooping purposes...I only got it a few months ago and he always grumbled that it had a password on it but I needed one on it for work and wasn't about to give it to him.

Glad it worked,

Nick

drim3r

Hiren's Boot CD has a lot of tools, to blank windows pass too.