windows password

i got an older computer form a friend----its password protected and he cant remember it
what can i do

 

Win95/98? Could try just clicking on Cancel. Or boot to a DOS prompt and navigate to the C:\windows directory. Do a dir *.pwl, and rename (ren) whatever comes up to *.pwl.old.

 

If it's a third party program selective startup will enable you to bypass it. I did that once on a teachers comp .

 

Whats selective Startup? does it bypass novell?

 

What i would try to do is to press F8 repeatedly while Windows is loading (assuming it has windows). Let the dos prompt come up with all of it's choices and start through safe mode. Once in, just delete whatever setting he has. That's what i do for Windows XP, whenever i need to enter a home pc that has a password.

 

never thought of that. might work. I will have to try that with one of the school computers to see if there systems are good enough or not. Does it allow you to have admin powers or what?

 

I am not 100% sure if it might work with a network (since the administrators should have it gridlocked). But i was referring to home pc's, because the guy who started the post was referring to the computer as though it were for his home. On a network......it would be interesting to see what would be the result, especially that you are capturing the OS before it fully finishes its loading..

 

Selective startup is part of the safe mode menu when you press F8 before boot like ezorption said. You can use it to bypass certain 3rd party programs in win 9.x that store the password locally. It might be a different story with programs like novell, but you just gotta experiment starting different things. BTW- I'm talking about "step by step confirmation" in the startup menu.