Reset Passwords

[Jo and the Bush all/any]

Hello. I finally found my Laptop from 3 years ago! but I don't know any of the Passwords anymore. I don't know how to access anything on the Computer, or even how to reset the Computer. Please Help.

 

My Laptop uses Windows Vista Business. I don't care about any of the data currently on it. It was from 3 years ago.

[Terisen he/him]

Do you know if there's a recovery partition on it?  If there is, you could boot to it (typically, the D drive) and do a complete restore.

[Jo and the Bush all/any]

A recovery Partition? Uh, I don't even know what that is.

[Terisen he/him]

Typically, computers that come with Windows installed will have a separate partition with a recovery image on it.  It's like a recovery CD that's always there.  It will look like another hard drive in Windows.  This site gives a general step-by-step on how to use the recovery partition:

 

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how-to/laptop/3462995/factory-reset-laptop/

[Kurkistan he/him]

Do some reading on the Interwebs so that you know what's what, but what you're going to want to do is access the Boot Menu (/BIOS) and try to select your Recovery Partition (if it exists) to boot from.

 

Failing that, just get a fresh install of any operating system and that'll also do the trick.