«

My friend's son has forgotten his password and can't start his Acer laptop.
Is there a way round this?


John the West Ham fan


<><

housetrained wrote:
> My friend's son has forgotten his password and can't start his Acer
> laptop. Is there a way round this?
>
>
> John the West Ham fan
>
>
> <><
>
>


It is a security feature and there's no easy way "around" it.

What I do is to put people in the frame of mind when they
created the password, and see if they can hit upon it
with their subconscious.

Failing that, you could try waterboarding. I hear it works wonders.\

housetrained wrote:
> My friend's son has forgotten his password and can't start his Acer
> laptop. Is there a way round this?
>
>
> John the West Ham fan
>
>

On a desktop machine, the password implementation may be to store it in
the CMOS RAM. Removing the main battery, then removing the CMOS coin cell,
may return the BIOS to defaults, included no stored password. On a laptop,
some of the older ones, leave the CR2032 coin cell within easy reach via
an access door on the bottom. The CR2032 is shrink wrapped and on the end
of a twisted pair extension cord.

There are also some laptops build like bank vaults. The CMOS RAM in the
Southbridge, holds normal settings like the boot device. But the password
is not stored in there.

Instead, the password is stored in a 2Kbit serial EEPROM, a separate
device, not subject to battery state. You could unplug all batteries
for ten years, and the password would be safely housed in the EEPROM.
The manufacturer arranges, that the only way to reset the password,
is to send the laptop to them. A gentleman in Eastern Europe, offers
a software solution for $50 to reset it for you, but I have no idea
whether that $50 bet ever wins.

Such "bank vault" laptops may also include TPM (Trusted Platform Module),
encrypted drive, the whole works, and could well be more secure than
any desktop. They're the kind of laptop an executive might lose, and
not fear for data loss if the laptop is stolen or misplaced while on
a business trip. I presume after a little disassembly, a thief could
repurpose the laptop and sell it, but chances are the data on the
drive won't be as easy to get at.

So the answer could well depend on what type of laptop it is. If
its a cheap consumer laptop, removing batteries or "clearing CMOS"
might be all it takes.

(the notion of backdoor passwords, how quaint. A good way to drive
yourself crazy...)

https://answers.google.com/answers/m...dview&id=53385

Paul

"housetrained" <> wrote in message
news:irb0mj$b46$...
> My friend's son has forgotten his password and can't start his Acer
> laptop. Is there a way round this?
>
>
> John the West Ham fan
>
>
> <><
>
>


If you consider that point of a password is to lock unauthorized people (by
definition, those that do not know the password) out of the machine, there
is no easy work-around. You are asking the functional equivelent of, I lost
the keys to my car, is there another way to start it? Or, I am locked out of
my house, how can I get in?

The whole point of locking somebody out is to keep them out. If they could
simply create a key out of thin air, then the lock is not very effective.

I fear the recovery of this will in all likelihood be a fatal event for the
data stored on the drive. You could buy a device that will allow the HDD to
be plugged into another machine so that you can copy the contents of the MY
DOCUMENTS folder to a suitable storage device -- a USB drive, for example --
then you can wipe the HDD and reinstall Windows. Once this is done, you can
then use Windows Updates to restore the OS to SP3, and then go to work
reinstalling the applications and programs that were there. Then copy the MY
DOCUMTNES folder from the USB drive back onto the HDD.

This is one of those times where I can't shake the feeling that if you have
to ask how to do this, you should take the machine someplace and let them do
it.

housetrained embroidered on the monitor :
> My friend's son has forgotten his password and can't start his Acer laptop.
> Is there a way round this?
>
>
> John the West Ham fan
>
>
> <><

Not an easy one.

Basically, on a laptop, without the PSSWD, you probably either need to
take it to a pro shop or reinstall Windows (assuming you have the
Windows disk - and a disk drive).

Most laptops store their psswd on a special chip on the mobo. To
fiddle with this, you need a special device.

As for software options, there is a program available as freeware (but
heed):

http://www.freewarefiles.com/CmosPwd_program_17975.html

This program has 2 functions -

1) to recover the password from SOME BIOS/CMOS.
2) To kill an existing password completely. NOTE: This function cannot
be used on a laptop or it will explode (well, not literally, but it
might as well)

Drawbacks:
-It doesn't work with all BIOS
-It is only half functional at best with laptops. For the most part,
not useable on laptops.
-You have to be able to boot to an operating system besides current
Windows (such as DOS or an old Win95/98 boot disk), but this is most
often done from floppies, which you don't have on a modern laptop. You
might have a bootable CD, I suppose.
-Anytime you're in CMOS, if you don't have some idea of what you're
doing, you could really screw something up.

--
-There are some who call me...
Jim


"Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"housetrained" <> wrote in message
news:irb0mj$b46$...
> My friend's son has forgotten his password and can't start his Acer
> laptop. Is there a way round this?
>
>
> John the West Ham fan
>
>
> <><
>
>

Hypnotism

"housetrained" wrote in message news:irb0mj$b46$...

My friend's son has forgotten his password and can't start his Acer laptop.
Is there a way round this?


Well, when I showed him his password reminder he remembered it and all is
now OK. Thanks everyone.
John

housetrained wrote:
> "housetrained" wrote in message news:irb0mj$b46$...
>
> My friend's son has forgotten his password and can't start his Acer laptop.
> Is there a way round this?
>
>
> Well, when I showed him his password reminder he remembered it and all
> is now OK. Thanks everyone.
> John
>

So in fact, this was the Windows password and not the laptop BIOS password ?
The Windows password has provision for a "hint", while I don't think
the BIOS does. I was just looking in the "SAM" file with a hex editor,
and the hint is actually stored in plaintext inside the SAM file.
(I was doing that from another OS.)

For next time, you can play with this. This can have side effects, and
make EFS protected material inaccessible, so should be used with care.
If the person has protected files with EFS and has a "key disk" or
other form of recovery set up, then in such a situation it would be
safe to reset the password. Otherwise, you could be toasting some
files. This tool doesn't actually "crack" the password, it just
resets it, which isn't nearly as useful from a "spying" perspective.
If you reset the password and enter the account, any EFS stuff is
off limits to you.

http://pogostick.net/~pnh/ntpasswd/

Paul

Paul was thinking very hard and all he could come up with was:
> housetrained wrote:
>> "housetrained" wrote in message news:irb0mj$b46$...
>>
>> My friend's son has forgotten his password and can't start his Acer laptop.
>> Is there a way round this?
>>
>>
>> Well, when I showed him his password reminder he remembered it and all is
>> now OK. Thanks everyone.
>> John
>>
>
> So in fact, this was the Windows password and not the laptop BIOS password ?
> The Windows password has provision for a "hint", while I don't think
> the BIOS does. I was just looking in the "SAM" file with a hex editor,
> and the hint is actually stored in plaintext inside the SAM file.
> (I was doing that from another OS.)
>
> For next time, you can play with this. This can have side effects, and
> make EFS protected material inaccessible, so should be used with care.
> If the person has protected files with EFS and has a "key disk" or
> other form of recovery set up, then in such a situation it would be
> safe to reset the password. Otherwise, you could be toasting some
> files. This tool doesn't actually "crack" the password, it just
> resets it, which isn't nearly as useful from a "spying" perspective.
> If you reset the password and enter the account, any EFS stuff is
> off limits to you.
>
> http://pogostick.net/~pnh/ntpasswd/
>
> Paul

I stumbled across the older version of this a long time ago and never
got to play with it, then forgot all about it. A new tool for my
treasure chest.

Thanks, Paul

Housetrained, glad all worked out.

--
-There are some who call me...
Jim


"You got to be careful if you don't know where you're going, because
you might not get there."
- Yogi Berra