Inherited Laptop and we can't login

Steedster · 19 Jan 2022

My father-in-law passed away and my wife is in possession of his laptop. She was using it for a time but it "updated"(according to her) and now it asks for a password and where before this "update" she could arrow past the password.....she cannot anymore.
This laptop started life as a Windows 7 machine but had subsequently been updated to Windows
The login screen prompts to "Owner"
I have gone into safe mode as the administrator and typed the net user prompt
It gives no name for the Computer and I cannot add a user. Trying to change passwords using /random didn't work either
We are trying to retrieve his emails and some final correspondence and we cannot do a fresh install as we would lose what we need.
I am very skeptical or the passwords retreival programs. Please, any help would be greatly appreciated. My wife is pretty distraught and this is just a touch out of my wheelhouse.

Bree · 19 Jan 2022

Welcome to Ten Forums

Sorry to hear of your loss.

If the account is a local account then you may be able to do something about it, but if it was a Microsoft account (one that has an email address) then you won't be able to reset its password. You will however be able to sign in with a new account and retrieve any user files.

Enable the built in Administrator account. You'll need to use Option Five in this tutorial.

Enable or Disable Elevated Administrator account in Windows 10

Then you should be able to sign in as Administrator and reset the password for the Owner account if it is a local account. If it was a MS account , you can create a new local account. Make that an administrator and you'll be able to get to the original user's files.

idgat · 19 Jan 2022

Try booting from a Linux distro USB (recommmend Mint). You can recover the personal files, but you will need to know the email program he used and the format of the stored email files.

Steedster · 20 Jan 2022

well I changed the 11 to a 10 in the registry and now I cannot access the command prompt at all

dalchina · 20 Jan 2022

We are trying to retrieve his emails and some final correspondence

What do you know of how email was handled? Were they
a. Handled by a browser - i.e. an online account
b. Handled by an email client in which case they may be on the PC, and may or may not be on line.

If you are dealing with an online account you would need login details of course.

If on the PC, it depends on which email client was used.

As has been said above, booting the PC from a live boot disk (Google, download iso file, create on flash drive e.g. using Rufus) will give access to any file on disk - provided the disk is not encrypted by e.g. bitlocker, and the files are not encrypted by other means.

Try3 · 20 Jan 2022

Steedster said:

The login screen prompts to "Owner"
I have gone into safe mode as the administrator and typed the net user prompt
It gives no name for the Computer and I cannot add a user. Trying to change passwords using /random didn't work either

In the hope of avoiding your going down the wrong track, your comments & diagram indicate that you have booted from a Windows installation USB or equivalent.

Commands such as net user retrieve information relating to the temporary OS initiated by the installation USB and are not at all related to the installed Windows on the computer.
The user accounts you see listed in your diagram exist only in the temporary OS initiated by the installation USB and are not at all related to user accounts in the installed Windows

I don't know why you have a problem after following Bree's advice but I think I have seen it reported by people who missed out tutorial Option 5, Steps 3-8 and have instead modified the Registry of the temporary OS initiated by the installation USB and not the Registry of the installed Windows on the computer.
Please confirm that
- you followed those Steps correctly, and that
- you have now removed the installation USB and are trying to boot Windows normally.

Best of luck,
Denis

Steedster · 20 Jan 2022

Denis,
I did not try the installation disk at first but went down a command prompt rabbit hole. In changing the elevated administrator account level I inadvertently disabled my ability to log in as an administrator. I created a repair disk on my other machine and tried to repair the problematic laptop to no avail but what it did allow me to do was to get back into the command prompt to turn the admin functionality back on. So now....I'm back where I was at 5am.

The issue, like I expressed intiallly, is that Windows asks for a password to a laptop that shouldn't require one as that feature was never enabled.
In getting into the registry and actually seeing the tree for the drive I saw that there are 5 different partitions on this machine. Every Dell I have ever used has had at least one separate partition for the boot but 5? I can only assume, since this was my father's machine and it has been upgraded from Windows 7, it comes from improper installation or just the nature of continually upgrading software without a firm grasp or instruction on removing the "old stuff". That being said, we are still where we were initially and I still don't know how to get into the machine to access his emails(held in an email client on the machine). Since I've been able to reestablish the Administrator I will try to rerun the repair and see how that works.

Try3 · 20 Jan 2022

I'm not at all sure where you are now.

- You've enabled the Built-in Admin using the tutorial Bree linked you to?
- You've selected that account at the bootup login screen [its username is "Administrator" & its password is blank so you can get straight through that by pressing the login button - unless, of course, your late father-in-law had taken the very unusual step of adding a password to it]?
- I don't understand what your comment means, "In getting into the registry and actually seeing the tree for the drive".

If you are logged in [using the Built-in Admin account] then you might well see five partitions. To check if there's anything of concern, post a Disk management diagram and people can tell you if it's normal

- Right click on the Start button & select Windows PowerShell [Admin] or Command prompt [Admin], whichever is there
- Then enter diskmgmt.msc
- There's a guide on posting a diagram of that in How to Post a Screenshot of Disk Management - TenForumsTutorials Or even split it into two diagrams [for the upper part & lower part of the Disk mgmt. window] to keep it all legible. Make sure you drag around the column dividers in the upper part to ensure all the text is visible.
- There's a general guide to posting diagrams in How to Upload and Post Screenshots and Files - TenForumsTutorials

Once you are able to get into the computer by logging in as the Built-in Admin then you can be talked through looking for his old email application and its contents.

Best of luck,
Denis

I do not disagree with Les [below] but I think it will probably be simpler to sort out the login issue instead.

LesFerch · 20 Jan 2022

Have you considered pulling the hard drive from that laptop and connecting it to another computer using a USB-SATA cable like this one?

Since the drive is not encrypted, that will certainly give you access to all files on all partitions. Whether you can get at the email contents could depend on how that email data is stored or depend on having the email password, but one step at a time...

Steedster · 20 Jan 2022

So I was able to get into the computer once I was able to reestablish Administrator rights and I deleted the latest quality and feature updates. I restarted the laptop and git back into the system and the desktop came up as it did prior to all of this mess. I went back into the command prompt and now the user account comes up. It appears that there is no data in any of the folders but there is 46GB worth of space taken up on the hard drive. The search continues