Recover/reset ‘owner’ Password On Win7 Os

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i inherited a toshiba satellite l455d with win7 installed, install cd lost.

‘owner’ passworded, forgotten by previous owner. ‘guest’ is does not have a password.

i want remove unneeded music software and files and other crud before i defrag the drive so as to have more room to dual boot linux.

i would wipe win7, but not an option at this time.

i booted laptop, pulled ‘ntpassword’, copied files to a usb stick, tried to run;

X:syslinux.exe -ma X:

as ‘guest’, it failed.

how can i make usb stick bootable from linux?

any/all suggestion/help is greatly appreciated.

thanks in advance.

6 thoughts on - Recover/reset ‘owner’ Password On Win7 Os

  • thats the only sane thing to do with a used computer being redeployed, format it completely, and clean install your desired software.

    there’s a util called NTPASSWD that can reset the password of a windows system, this util is run by booting a cd or usb stick, and directly modifies the ‘SAM’ in windows (somewhat akin to booting a rescue CD on
    ‘nix, and editing /mnt/etc/shadow to remove passwords).

  • so, just what do you think “but not an option at this time” means? ;-)

    obviously you did not read all of what i posted. had you read paragraph following what you responded to, you would/may/might have become aware that i did pull *ntpassword*. note correct spelling. ;-)

    if find such can be much easier by booting init level 1 to edit
    /mnt/etc/shadow. after which, ‘init 2’, logging in as root to run ‘passwd’ [proper spelling] to set new root user password and any other user passwords.

    being that i “copied files” from pogostick.com, meant that i had pulled the cd version also, so i burned the cd version.

    when i booted ntpassword cd, i cleared passwords for both admin and owner. rebooted, now ‘administrator’, ‘owner’ and ‘guest’ are all with out passwords.

    as owner, i created the 2 system recovery dvd’s and the application dvd.

    logged out as owner, logged in as administrator and i was able to run;

    X:syslinux.exe -ma X:

    now i have a bootable usb stick with ntpassword.

    all of which brings me back to my original question;

    how can i make usb stick bootable from linux?

    any/all suggestion/help is greatly appreciated.

    thanks in advance.

  • it typically means you’re living with self-imposed limits. I would never use an old copy of MS Windows, god knows what might be broken down in the bowels of that overly complex and opaque system.

  • It depends on how you put content on the USB stick. Typically, I just ‘dd’ the installation DVD to the USB device, that way there’s no messing around. You can also follow the instructions here: http://wiki.CentOS.org/HowTos/InstallFromUSBkey

    Of course, I have no idea how you’d do anything with an OS other than Windows.


    Jonathan Billings

  • self-imposed limits? not really. ‘norton system works’ is installed and current, including ‘nis’. tho original owner did not know how to lock down oos with ‘nis’. it is a firewall in it’s own rights.

    i doubt that anything is ‘old’ or ‘broken’ being that latest service pack updates were installed. therefore it should tend to be win7.1. thankfully it is not win8.

    to give you a hint and why it is to remain win7 for awhile, think about following and understand that discussion of such is not something to be done in an “open list”.

    Pooh, say hello to Tigger, Piglet and Owl for me.
    Enjoy what you have waiting for you at home when you
    Return to the Hundred Acre Wood in Ashdown Forest.

    in closing, what was hiding in the back of the brain finally over whelmed the ‘chemo brain’ and came forward to front. “syslinux”. i have used it a few times in past, but i did not recall it until a few hours ago. :-)

    in closing, thanks for your replies.

  • procedure described at pogostick.com is to copy a group of files contained in file ‘usb140201.zip’ to a usb stick, then from command line;

    X:syslinux.exe -ma X:

    which executes the “syslinux.exe” that was copied to the usb stick in above.

    X: = volume containing usb stick
    -ma:
    -m = install an mbr
    -a = mark partition as active

    oos ‘syslinux.exe’ command differs a bit from the linux ‘syslinux’.

    from reading ‘man syslinux’, i do not believe that i could have used linux ‘syslinux’ as it would install wrong files to the usb stick.

    as stated in an earlier post, solution was to create a bootable cd of ‘ntpassword’ and booted it to remove all passwords. after doing that, i was able to execute ‘syslinux.exe’ on usb stick as admin. i now have ‘ntpassword’ on both cd and usb stick.

    having used ‘ntpassword’ on win95, win98, xp, and nt systems, i will say that that latest release is easy to use just as earlier version that i have on a cd of ‘austrumi 0.9.2’ is. in fact, it is almost the same.

    i will say that anyone who has to deal with oos should have a bootable of latest release of ‘ntpassword’.

    do not feel bad, most oos users do not know how to do anything with windows, other than play games and music. ;-)

    thank you for you reply and the link.

    peace out.

    If Bill Gates got a dime for every time Windows crashes…
    …oh, wait. He does. THAT explains it!

    in a world with out fences, who needs gates.

    CentOS GNU/Linux 6.6

    tc,hago.

    g
    .