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I have a sony vaio running Windows Vista Ultimate that was added to my former business domain many years ago and which has not been used since my business was shut down 3 or 4 years ago.

The logon screen displays the old Domain Name\former user name. I have tried my last known password without success and also tried inserting no password. No Admin option is displayed and trying Admin and Administrator as alternative users (with and without possible passwords) does not work.

I used HIRENS BOOT DISC (burned to CD because the Vaio has no CD drive and Vista is on the HDD) and removed the password for my old user name (the Administrator password is protected) but that did not work and I only realised afterwards that once my password had been deleted it cannot be changed so I used "Mini XP" on Hirens to insert a new Administrator User under another totally different name and password

According to Hirens the log=on screen should have shown my new user but before I even got so far as that Windows had to repair itself (to a last known good point).

My only remaining thought is that the Vaio might want a password for the old Domain (none of which I ever knew because my IT was outsourced). so I wonder if I can persuade my Vaio it is no longer part of my old Domain, or remove it from it, will that make it possible to sort out the problem of the missing passwords?

Many thanks in anticipation.

Eric Ramage
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2 Answers2

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What you should do with Hiren's boot is:

  1. Use the Offline NT/2000/XP/Vista/7 Password Changer to remove the local admin password from the Security Account Manager(SAM).
  2. Unlock the local admin account. The tool will tell you if the account is already dislocked or not.
  3. When you quit the password remover tool, be sure to quit and enter y to save the changes you've made.
  4. Reboot the PC into your Vista OS.

  5. To login use:

    • ".\admin" as username.
      The ".\" will make you login at the local machine instead of the domain.

    • Leave the password blank, since you removed it earlier.

You should now been logged in as the local admin and be able to remove the PC from the domain.

Thimi11
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If you don't need files from the PC anymore, the best thing to do is clean-install a fresh OS. If you do need those files, consider making a Linux LiveCD, booting from it, copying files to a thumb drive, and then clean-installing after you have your files safe.

MountainMan
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