I have forgotten my user password on an old laptop I haven't used for ages I believe I can change this in DOS and have seen seen several videos on youtube on how to do this. In order to do this I have to boot the laptop up in DOS, I have created a bootable USB stick using RUFUS. I have changed the BIOS settings so that the laptop boots up in DOS and it does so. After booting in DOS I am left in the C root directory. When I perform a dir command I see a number of files (autoexecbat etc) and one directory called Locale. I do not see the Windows directory so I have fallen at the first hurdle. It is as though the Windows directory is hidden from me so I cannot access it. I have tried searching on the www for various ways to un-hide the directory to no avail. If I restart the PC and let it start up in Safe mode I can see various drivers etc (?) being loaded from the Windows/system32 directory and indeed I am left at the Windows 7 login window but of course I can't go any farther as I've forgotten my password! Would seem to indicate the Windows directory is there - but I cannot see it or access it. Any help appreciated.
6825
I got a brand new Windows 7 machine, installed the operating system, created one account and forgot its password. What can I do?  There is no external CD, the operating system is loaded from somewhere inside the machine.  I already tried to remember passwords and tried all candidates with all possible combinations of caps lock, num lock etc.
112556
I just put Ubuntu 15.04 on a flash drive using pendrivelinux, and when attempting to install it on my computer, it asks for a username and password.  What is the default username and password?  I haven't been able to find it anywhere on the web.  Thanks!
91827
I messed up my system earlier, I was greeted with a black screen, when booting in to Ubuntu. When I started up my laptop, I selected the recovery option from the grub menu, and chose fallback at root terminal. I saw that I was able to use the add user command, with it, I probably could use to create a privileged user on my machine.   Isn't that a security issue?  One could have stolen my laptop and at startup chose recovery and add another user, I'm fudged then. Including my data.  Come to think of it, even if you somehow remove that entry, one could boot from a live-CD, get a chroot up and running and then add another user, with the right privileges that allows it to see all my data.   If I set the BIOS to boot at my HD only, no USB, CD/DVD, Network startup, and set a BIOS password, it still wouldn't matter, because you'd still have that grub recovery startup entry.  I am fairly certain that someone from China, Russia can't hack my Ubuntu Trusty Tahr, from the network, because it's secure like that. But, if one has physical access to my - your - machine, then, well, that's why I'm asking this question. How can I secure my machine so that hacking through physical access is not possible?    Bug Report:
46035
I have .rar file that is password protected, but I accidentally have forgotten the password. The file extremely important to me.  How can I get my file back? In windows, there was many programs that could remove the password of such a file. Is there one for Ubuntu?
94931
How do I know my username? I've installed Ubuntu, but I don't know my username, only my password. I can't access my laptop and it can't be opened.
101152
I forgot my Ubuntu password so I booted into recovery and dropped into a root shell prompt and this is what happened:  root@username-PC:~# passwd username Enter new UNIX password: Retype new UNIX password: passwd: Authentication token manipulation error passwd: password unchanged
68093
I'm new to how Ubuntu works and installed it yesterday alongside Windows 7, but in doing so I have created a few problems. I have partitions for Windows, Ubuntu, System Recovery, and storage for all my files with the intention to access them on either OS, but I don't even see all of my drives listed on Home Folder. Not to mention that  during the Ubuntu instillation I managed to screw up any chance of booting to the Windows side of things at all. I'll fix Windows once I get my hands on a copy in a couple days, but in the mean time any suggestions for accessing my files?  If you need me to find any data about my computer to help you figure out what's wrong with it, please don't hesitate to tell me what I need to show you. Thanks
87490
I want to change my computer's password. Right now my password is abc123. I run this command:  sudo passwd   I entered my current password and then a new one but the change does not take effect. How can I resolve this problem ?
111873
A password is always combination of characters &amp; numbers. I am so much used to num pad that every time windows start I end up entering wrong password just because NUM lock isn't ON by default. Since it's network login, it takes a bit long time to reset &amp; prompt for right password. Is there a way to enable NUM Lock on when Windows loads?
1966
I recently installed Ubuntu 12.10 and it requires a passphrase to boot up (I installed it with an encrypted file system).  Do I have to reinstall to change to a standard unencrypted file system?
67193
So I have a Windows 7 home machine with 2 user accounts.  One is a standard user account and one is an administrator account.  Now this is going to be put in the hands of a very low-tech user so I don't want them to be able to see the administrator account on logon, but they want to have a password to prevent someone else from using the machine.  My goal is that when the user turns on the computer, they are presented with their login.  After logging in to their non-administrator account, if something needs to be installed then the administrator account can be used through UAC.  I have tried creating the reg key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\SpecialAccounts\UserList and adding a dword of the account name and set it to 0.  It succeeded in hiding the account from th login screen.  As well as hiding it from UAC.  So it fails the second requirement, of being able to run things as administrator through UAC.  Also since I didn't set an administrator password (left it blank) it seems that I have completely locked myself out of the machine since runas doesn't accept blank passwords.  So I also cannot undo it, and have quite effectively bricked the install, prompting an OS reinstall.  This is Windows 7 Home, so there is no Users management console.
81600
We know that users' passwords are saved in /etc/passwd, but in an encrypted way, so even the root can't see them:  jane:x:501:501::/home/jane:/bin/bash fred:x:502:502::/home/fred:/bin/bash   As shown above, :x: represents the password.  Is there a way (possible configuration) to save the password in the /etc/passwd in clear text and such that the root can see them?
109901
I am using windows 7. My windows is not loading. I want to recover some files using dos commands, Is that possible anymore?
72074
I recently got an Acer Aspire E11 (E3-112m) and in order to install another OS I had to set a Supervisor password, so I used a well known password to me, the problem is that such password contains a special character ! which the password prompt won't let me input, though it let me when I had to set the password (buggy prompt I believe). Now everytime I need to change something in the BIOS I have to fail 3 times and go to  to generate a master key.  I have already tried several different methods to clear it:   Removing the CMOS battery Looking for the reset jumper (which doesn't even exist).   I also noticed there were 2 weird buttons on the front and back sides of the motherboard, I don't know what they are for but I also pressed them (while both the CMOS and the regular battery were disconnected). All of this without luck, the password just won't reset (though the RTC did).  Are there other ways to reset the Supervisor/Admin password on this model?
102036
I am booting from an Ubuntu CD on my laptop. I want to write all zeros to my hard drive, then re-stall Windows 7. I have backed up all the files I want to.  After booting up, I open a terminal window, and type:    dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1024   The computer responds with "permission denied".  Any suggestions on how to proceed?
98454
I followed the instructions in  to   Once I installed Windows I found that I have to press F10 to select the hard drive every single time to make it boot into Windows. I tried re-enabling Secure Boot but then I am unable to find the hard drive in the bootable devices list.  What should I do?    my labtop is sumsang core i3  i mean that when i wanted to change my windows i can not find cd-rom in the list of F10 i saw the Instructions of this link    i Succeeded to do that and i changed my windows but then i can not go to windows automatically  I had to press F10 to select hard drive and i can go to windows i want To what it was before so I make secure boot (enabled) but I can't find hard drive on the list of F10.  maybe i Erred in doing my new windows  If i changed my windows again i can go to windows automatically or not  please i wait your advice and Instructions
111252
A few months back when I buggered up my netbook and then booted into it to get information from it using a live USB. (Thinking that was 10.10)   When I was copy/pasting this to another USB at no time was I required to enter my user name or password to access this information. Why and how was that possible? Shouldn't that not be possible? This was information from the 'home' including documents, pictures, music, videos and some other locations.  This does not sound secure at all, is there any way that I can ensure this cannot happen again and that user name and password would be required to access information on my installed Ubuntu computer when booting on that computer from a live USB/CD/DVD?