I just dealt with this last week. I had the exact same scenario, a laptop I took in as scrap was working and better than my current laptop, so I wanted to keep it. The problem was that it had a password on the Windows 7 and I couldn't get in. I tried ophcrack and Offline Windows Password & Registry Editor, but neither worked for me. Then I found Kon-Boot, but they wanted me to use the paid version to get into Windows 7. I wanted a free solution.
Ultimately what worked for me, to get into a Windows 7 machine, was using the SystemRescueCD described here:
How to Break Into a Windows PC (And Prevent It from Happening to You)
I should note for those trying this method, it is a little techy and you need to pay attention to what you are doing. If you are careful, it is not really all that hard. People with Linux experience will have a much easier time, but it is not necessary. Also, in my case the filename "SAM" could not be found, so I had to keep listing all the files in each new directory I entered by using the -l command in each directory. Eventually, I found the file that I needed was "sam" not "SAM". It is case sensitive, so if it doesn't work for you at first, if you carefully toy with it you should be able to get the password reset. Then you can get into your new machine.
Here is a short video of the guy who wrote the article using this method:
Now for a bonus. Once I unlocked the machine, and logged into Windows it was showing an error that this was "Not a Genuine Copy of Windows." I recalled that my customer had mentioned that he never finished registering his software, so this wasn't all that unexpected. Nonetheless, I found a fix for how to remove this problem too. Here is a link to a site that helped me figure that out:
Remove Windows not Genuine Watermark without Patches and Cracks
Finally, I know this may not work for everyone. I can only report that it worked for me, and now I am enjoying my new dual core laptop running Windows 7 that I paid
scrap prices for.
Bookmarks