Hi bdgranpa,
Sorry to hear of the problem with the password on your machine.
Password security can be a contentious issue as sometimes folks who have no right of access to a particular machine (that is password protected) want us to help them defeat legitimate protections put there by the machine's owner……
Other times folks have genuinely forgotten the password, and can't find the paper record of it despite a thorough search, and turn to us in desperation.
I am sure that as a fair minded person you can see our dilemma, on our forum, at long range we cannot positively identify the reasonable requests for assistance from folks who are 100% genuine, from others who may have no legitimate access rights.
As a consequence we have a policy of assisting folks as far as we feel able, by striking a balance between providing reasonable and appropriate assistance, whilst keeping well away from advice that could in any way be interpreted as attempting to defeat password protections placed on a machine by its owner for reasonable security and access control.
Here's some steps that you can consider taking, but please only try one step at a time!:
1 Remember that passwords are "case sensitive" so try your usual passwords (or what you thought it was) with combinations of upper and lower case characters
2 Make sure the "caps lock" function on your keyboard has not been inadvertently applied
3 Use the password reset disc that (hopefully) you created by following this link: A floppy disc, CD or flash drive can be used for this.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/305478/
4 Reboot into safe mode (press F8 immediately after power on) If you get to the main Administrator account press the Enter key at the password prompt
5 Immediately after powering on, press ALT+Ctrl+Del key combinations twice in rapid succession, if you get to the main Administrator account at the password prompt press the Enter key
6 Format your boot drive and reinstall Windows and all your applications (make sure your back up is good and includes at least your network adapter driver and all your product serial keys including the one for Windows itself.) the formatting will clear all files on your boot drive including malicious code, or undesirable elements that may be present.
7 Consult a local competent computer technician, take your computer and clear documentary evidence of ownership, and request that she/he assists you, (but do get a fixed price estimate of cost first.)
I do hope that one of the above will assist you, but regret that we are unable to offer other suggestions.
If you have difficulty with any of these ..then post back and we will do our best to help.
Regards
paws
