MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
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I have an old laptop running Vista, but can't remember the password and can't find the Windows disc.
Can anyone recommend any free software to recover/bypass the password?
Ophcrack should do the job
http://www.pendrivelinux.com/usb-ophcrack-windows-login-password-cracker/
@beefheart that would be pretty counterproductive if you could download software to bypass the password. That being said if you can remember that the password was just a simple word without capitalisation of a numbers/special characters then running a dictionary against your login will probably break it, that's what programms like the one above do
Recovering a Vista password is tricky, security changed after XP. Ophcrack will attempt to recover the password, but it's a lengthy process and unreliable.
I'd suggest you're better off with [url= http://pogostick.net/~pnh/ntpasswd/ ]Nordahl's[/url]. This will allow you to reset the password, which is a considerably easier task.
A vista disk will allow you to reset the password, takes a few minutes, while cracking it can take hours.
Oh yeah.
http://pcsupport.about.com/od/windowsvista/ht/reset-password-windows-vista.htm
(If you don't have a Vista disc, you might have 'recover' on the F8 boot menu)