Computer help please?

boogieman

Mrs B changed the password on her laptop the other day and has promptly forgotten it, so she can't now get into it. Help!!

A bit of googling says she needs a windows recovery disc, which she doesn't have, or needs to access the administrator mode, which neither of us can seem to do. It's an HP laptop running Windows 7 home premium.

Can anyone advise? Keep it simple please, we both have the computer skills of a 7 year old. Thanks!

digitalscream

Press F8 repeatedly just before it gets to the Windows loading screen - it should give you a black and white menu where you can choose Safe Mode. Boot into Safe Mode, and then you should get an extra option of logging in as Administrator; quite often that has no password on consumer laptops. From there, she can reset the password on her own account.

Caveat: As long as she hasn't encrypted her account's files, you're good to go. If she has encrypted them, doing this will likely mean she can't access them.

boogieman

I managed to get in via the safe mode and then did a restore point to an earlier date, which seems to have taken her password back to the original. I have no idea if that's how it's supposed to work but thanks for the advice @digitalscream.