Admin rights

[Guest]

Hi,

I have been given a second hand Sony vaio with windows xp operating system,
the old user does know not the admin password on their account as not used it
for such a long time. is there a way i can overite their password without
using a restore disk as i cant get hold of one.

Help please

 

[Patrick Keenan]

Hi,

I have been given a second hand Sony vaio with windows xp operating
system,
the old user does know not the admin password on their account as not used
it
for such a long time. is there a way i can overite their password without
using a restore disk as i cant get hold of one.

Help please

Is this XP Home or Pro? If it's XP Home, the old user will almost
certainly not have been using the Administrator account as this can only be
accessed in Safe Mode.

Restart the system and press the F8 key as it starts, then select Safe Mode.
By default, the Administrator password is usually blank (just press enter)
and from there you can go to Control Panel, Users, and do what you need to.

If the Administrator account was given a password, or if it's XP Pro where
the password may be present, you can use a number of Linux-based boot CDs to
remove the password(s). I've used Astrumi for this purpose. Once
done, the system won't have passwords and you can just restart normally.

Note that if it's XP Pro, and if the user had invoked encryption, and you
remove or change the password from outside their account, any encrypted data
will be permanently lost unless the account credentials were backed up and
are valid. If it's XP Home, this does not apply.

HTH
-pk

 

[Ricky]

See if this helps..
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/321305/en-us

| Hi,
|
| I have been given a second hand Sony vaio with windows xp operating
system,
| the old user does know not the admin password on their account as not
used it
| for such a long time. is there a way i can overite their password
without
| using a restore disk as i cant get hold of one.
|
| Help please

 

[Vanguard]

Hi,

I have been given a second hand Sony vaio with windows xp operating
system,
the old user does know not the admin password on their account as
not used it
for such a long time. is there a way i can overite their password
without
using a restore disk as i cant get hold of one.

Help please

Use the installation CD that the user must include with the sale of
the computer to which the OEM version is associated to wipe out and
install a fresh copy of Windows. The seller did include a *legal*
copy of Windows, right? If the seller didn't provide an install CD
then maybe the install is in a hidden partition on the hard drive.
When selling used hardware, the seller should wipe the drive or do
pre-installs along with providing you with all the installation media
and licenses for all that pre-installed software. According the
online support pages for a couple Vaio models that I looked at (you
never mentioned WHICH model that you have), it comes with Recovery CDs
that you use to reinstall the OS. Did you get those from the seller?
If not then all you got was the hardware and NOT the software which
means now you get to go buy all that the software the seller left on
the polluted hard drive.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I have been given a second hand Sony vaio with windows xp operating
system, the old user does know not the admin password on their
account as not used it for such a long time. is there a way i can
overite their password without using a restore disk as i cant get
hold of one.

If I bought a used computer, the first thing I would do with it would be to
reinstall the operating system cleanly. You have no idea how the computer
has been maintained, what has been installed incorrectly, what is missing,
what viruses and spyware there may be, etc. I wouldn't want to live with
somebody else's mistakes and problems, possibility of kiddie porn, etc., and
I wouldn't recommend that anyone else do either.

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Hi,

I have been given a second hand Sony vaio with windows xp operating system,
the old user does know not the admin password on their account as not used it
for such a long time. is there a way i can overite their password without
using a restore disk as i cant get hold of one.

Help please

How to Log On to Windows XP If You Forget Your Password or Your
Password Expires
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q321305

Failing that, Linux-based password cracking utilities abound on the
Internet, freely available to anyone who can use Google.

However, with second-hand computers, especially if acquired from
strangers but perhaps even if acquired from a family member, your wisest
course of action would probably be to format the hard drives and start
fresh. You don't want to get in trouble because the original owner may
have filled the hard drive with kiddie porn, or have problems because
the original owner downloaded/installed viruses or other malware.

In this case, where the previous "owner" doesn't know the Administrator
password, I would also strongly suggest that you check with local law
enforcement agencies to ensure the laptop isn't stolen.

Simply boot from the WinXP installation CD. You'll be offered the
opportunity to delete, create, and format partitions as part of the
installation process. (You may need to re-arrange the order of boot
devices in the PC's BIOS to boot from the CD.)



--

Bruce Chambers

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