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Windows 7 reset pw question?

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Shou Miko

Shou Miko

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I got handed a old HP laptop running Windows 7 Pro from a business owner that doesn't know the password of the current user and since the employee is not with the company anymore we cannot contact them for their password.

The business owner needs to look through the laptop before it's sold, trashed or recycle that no company values are getting lost so what is the best way to do a password reset without losing any important credentials?

I am not sure if activating the hidden admin account is just the way to do or a third party tool? I have a couple of tools I used in the past where I didn't need to worry about any credentials getting lost in the process.
 
Shihab

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Only risk I can think of -barring that small chance of screwing up your entire filesystem- is to creds stored in Windows Credential Manager (encrypted with user pass, iirc). Those stored elsewhere shouldn't be affected (unless they encrypted with user pass as well, but then those are lost regardless of what you use to reset user pass).

You can clone the disk externally before doing anything if you are unsure.

On a side note: If the device is being decommissioned and the previous user is not with the org anymore, why care for the old credentials? Can't you just plug the drive into another computer, copy whatever assets and docs in it, then nuke the physical disk?
 
Shou Miko

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Shihab said:
Only risk I can think of -barring that small chance of screwing up your entire filesystem- is to creds stored in Windows Credential Manager (encrypted with user pass, iirc). Those stored elsewhere shouldn't be affected (unless they encrypted with user pass as well, but then those are lost regardless of what you use to reset user pass).

You can clone the disk externally before doing anything if you are unsure.

On a side note: If the device is being decommissioned and the previous user is not with the org anymore, why care for the old credentials? Can't you just plug the drive into another computer, copy whatever assets and docs in it, then nuke the physical disk?
Click to expand...

This is a smaller company, so the boss want to spend sometime just to make sure nothing is being lost since they work with special things that not a lot of other companies here do.

I cannot go in to specifics of what they do, they just want to make sure nothing is lost which I can understand.
 
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Boot Linux form a USB drive, it ignores NTFS file access restrictions.
 
Shou Miko

Shou Miko

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Wirko said:
Boot Linux form a USB drive, it ignores NTFS file access restrictions.
Click to expand...

I do not like to boot linux because the person that needs to look at it has to be able to look around in Windows themselves not having me around so not really an option.
 
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Shou Miko said:
I do not like to boot linux because the person that needs to look at it has to be able to look around in Windows themselves not having me around so not really an option.
Click to expand...
Do they need to just access the files or also run the apps installed on the notebook?
 
Shou Miko

Shou Miko

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Wirko said:
Do they need to just access the files or also run the apps installed on the notebook?
Click to expand...

It could be both, I am not sure so it would be great they can just login.

Usually I just either go through Windows when I have a admin user or activate the hidden admin to reset the password of a specific user, sometimes I seen the credential manager losing it's content and that I would like to avoid.
 
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_roman_

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Usually you remove those drives and keep them. You can sell the other hardware in question. Windows key is usually in the uefi of those notebooks.
 
Shou Miko

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_roman_ said:
Usually you remove those drives and keep them. You can sell the other hardware in question. Windows key is usually in the uefi of those notebooks.
Click to expand...

This is not the point, the boss of the company needs to look into the windows to see if the user has left anything behind because it's company data and they ain't tech people so they did not think about getting the password changed before the user stopped working there.

This happened with Windows 10, but this laptop was originally using Windows 7 it has a Windows 7 sticker on it.

Damn, the old domain server that this laptop was connected ain't active anymore, I guess I have to either take out disk or see if any off my cd tools for password resetting will work :banghead:
 
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