Steve Smith, host of your Technology Questions Answered, teaches users how to get back into their windows session after the password has been lost.
Episode #1-47 released on August 21, 2011
Every now and then, I get someone completely freaked out of their mind, they changed the password to their account, and better yet, forgot what the new password is. Now, for those of you whom this hasn't happened yet, I've got good news, I can help you prevent this scenario. Those whom this is happening to you right now, I've got your solution right here.
Now, you must keep in mind, the majority of these tricks are public knowledge and chances are, if you have a teenager, he or she may know these tricks already.
Create an extra administrator account on your computer, if you don't already have more than one. As long as one administrator account is accessible, you simply need to login into the other account and clear or change the password of the account in question.
Use the prevent a forgotten password option in the users account section of the control panel. It will add a small file to an external drive that you can use to unlock your account from the user login window upon Windows startup.
This is the scariest and coolest at the same time. It also requires a second Windows computer, preferably with the same operating system, and the user must be administrator themselves. This trick won't work if your drive is encrypted. Take the hard drive out of your computer, put it into another computer running windows, select your profile directory on your hard drive that you require access to, right click, click properties, select the security tab, advanced button, owner tab, select change owner, select the account to own the files. This results in the password information on that hard drive disappearing. Now, you can reinstall the hard drive in your computer, and just login, please be sure to apply tricks 1 and 2 to avoid requiring to do this again.
Now, just a few things to keep in mind, always check to make sure cap locks is not on, if you use the number pad to type your numbers, make sure it is activated as the number pad, and not the directional option, and always write down in a safe place the password to your account, but not on a post it, on your screen.
Next week I'll explain how to get back into your locked iPhone.
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Host : Steve Smith | Music : Jonny Lee Hart | Editor : Steve Smith | Producer : Zed Axis Productions