Tag Archives: Accessing

Accessing Vista Files – No Access to Any Accounts.?

A while back, I dropped my laptop from a pretty high distance and it pretty much killed most of the hardware. The hard drive however, somehow survived. Now, I would like to get my data off of my old hard drive, but I am having a bit of trouble…

My old laptop had a fingerprint scanner that I used 99.999% of the time, it became so convenient that I forgot the password to my Vista login. Because of that, there is no way for me to login or find any of my files.

Yes, I have tried the basics, OPHCrack couldn’t get my password, Windows NT/2k/XP/Vista Change Password / Registry Editor / Boot CD didn’t seem to do anything for me, it would tell me that it changed the password or deleted it yet when I restarted, nothing was changed.

Now I am out of ideas…think you can help?

—-Things That May Help You Help Me—-

1. The default “Administrator” account has no password set, I just don’t know how to login to this.
2. I don’t technically need access to Vista, if there is a way for me to grab my files using a live disk of Vista, I will do that, but I know next to nothing about Linux.

Help me out? Thanks.
Edit. I should have mentioned. I am using my hard drive by removing a hard drive from a friends and plugging mine in.

Accessing hard drives on a computer with a broken OS?

Ok my computer crashed and I had to restart it, which resulted in some corrupted system files. I tried a few ways to repair the OS (windows XP SP3), but didn’t have much luck, so long story short, now I want to backup my files so I can do a clean installation.

I’ve already tried using a windows live and linux live ubuntu CD to access my hard drives, which where both successful except that I can’t see my user account files in the “documents and settings” folder, i.e. when I go to C:Documents and Settings, I can only see the “default user” and “all users” folders, and not my own user (user which holds folders like “my documents and settings”, “my pictures”, etc)

I need a way to access those files so I can create a backup, after all, most of my pics and videos and a bunch of other stuff which I treasure greatly are all there and I can’t access them =(

Can anyone help me? thnx
P.S.I didn’t forget to check the “show hidden files” option, so I know that’s not the problem lol.