MikeHar
Member
Hi,
My Dell laptop has been misbehaving for a while so I decided the only solution was to do a fresh install. Normally I would nuke it, download the iso from Microsoft and re-install. It seems however that MS have pulled the plug on the downloads for OEM windows 7, but I do still have my product key so I tried 'restore to factory settings' instead. What I didn't realise however is that this requires a password for 'Administrator' which I don't know. I thought my own account was an admin account, but it isn't available as an option. So it seems I am left with two options:
1. Try and get the iso for an OEM install from somewhere trustworthy on the web. I'm not very trusting but if anyone can think of any source that is verifiably trustable I'd be interested to hear about it.
2. Try to find a way to get around the 'Administrator' password requirement. On this note I have booted to Ubuntu from a USB key and I can access both the 'OSDrive' and 'BDEDrive', I guess the Administrator must be somewhere on one or the other of these, suitably encrypted I assume. So, I don't suppose any helpfull person on the web has created a program to search for and decrypt this password ?
Any other suggestions ?
Thanks,
Mike.
My Dell laptop has been misbehaving for a while so I decided the only solution was to do a fresh install. Normally I would nuke it, download the iso from Microsoft and re-install. It seems however that MS have pulled the plug on the downloads for OEM windows 7, but I do still have my product key so I tried 'restore to factory settings' instead. What I didn't realise however is that this requires a password for 'Administrator' which I don't know. I thought my own account was an admin account, but it isn't available as an option. So it seems I am left with two options:
1. Try and get the iso for an OEM install from somewhere trustworthy on the web. I'm not very trusting but if anyone can think of any source that is verifiably trustable I'd be interested to hear about it.
2. Try to find a way to get around the 'Administrator' password requirement. On this note I have booted to Ubuntu from a USB key and I can access both the 'OSDrive' and 'BDEDrive', I guess the Administrator must be somewhere on one or the other of these, suitably encrypted I assume. So, I don't suppose any helpfull person on the web has created a program to search for and decrypt this password ?
Any other suggestions ?
Thanks,
Mike.
