Mother of Mud! Windows Password Disaster!

It's been that kind of a week .

How this could have happened, I can't begin to imagine, but I was away on business and realized that I did not have my Windows Password operative on my Z for all power programs, both battery and plugged-in yet I was leaving it unattended in hotel and conference rooms...

Out with it already! I changed my password for logging onto my own computer and somehow the first time I restarted, pardon my shout, IT WOULD NOT LET ME LOG ON WITH MY NEW WINDOWS PASSWORD, MY OLD WINDOWS PASSWORD, OR ANY OF 72 VARIATIONS I TRIED! I have not been able to use my Z for 2 days and I have no idea how I ever will.

I can't imagine how I could have typed in the wrong password, twice, when I set it up, but I have tried the 72 variations - all the variations and mistypes imaginable on the PW I intended to set - 3 times but Z no like.

If this was a "normal" computer with a normal SSD, I would just bag it, remove the drive and replace it, and get back to business. But no, I have a Sony Z, it doesn't have a "hard drive" of any kind that I can remove and replace, it has circuit cards with NAND chips on them, too complex (and expensive) for me to simply replace to get back up and running.

What do I do? I promise I will never write and over-long post again, never try to be clever when I am -NOT! Please please please tell me there is a way, short of sending my Z off to some mysterious place in, like, Belarus, to break into Windows and restore my use of my baby. I know that there are places you can send a hard drive to have it cracked, but what does one do when the hard drive is a Z11's mammoth 384GB SSD???

I'll pay for a solution, dearly.

 

Try this:
Windows 7 Password Reset & Recovery - Free Tool

 

Jeff, I have used the software above to reset a Windows XP password before. I think it's the best remedy. Since it's just a Windows password, you should be able to reformat the drive and reinstall Windows or restore an an image backup if you have one. But I would really vouch for the password reset utility. It worked for me before.

Or, have you tried Fingerprint logon?

 

Just to be sure...do you use the same keyboard layout for signing in as for typing in system?

 

And I'm sure you've already covered the num-lock variations?

 

...and caps lock.

 

Thank you one and all.

I tried all of your suggestions - the ones I hadn't already tried - and finally, Pasword Unlocker (Uniblue) was the program that did the trick, though I do not recommend it at all because it gave the worst bait-and-switch tactics I've ever seen, constantly touting versions that didn't work and making you pay up ([this] version doesn't do [what you want, even though we lied an said it did when we got you to pay for it.]! I think one of the other unlock programs would have worked for me, but there were other problems with my Z, which probably caused the glitch - bad virus attack from hotel wifi. (I really didn't think I had double-entered a new password wrong and couldn't replicate one minute later.)

And yes, I could have Googled it and got there, but it felt so good to know I could go straight to the right answer from people I know and trust.

LL (again!)

 

Glad you got that sorted - you can edit your signature now.

Strange that pogostick's ntpasswd didn't work for you. Did you select the right partition - IIRC for VAIOs there is an additional partition in the list of displayed partitions (recovery partition). (The link I posted even has a video. )

 

Buy a Z2.

Well, yes, that goes with buying a Z2.

It's really a bargain, think of all the great problems that Sony throws in at no extra charge.

 

FOTF, LOL!!

 

I was just trying to be helpful.

Unfortunately, that's about as helpful as I get.

 

@anytimer: Yes, I agree it would have worked. When I tried it I had not yet learned that I had sustained severe damage from a virus, and I was able to use Hiren's boot - before I'd cured the password issue - to boot into it's "mini XP" and get my hobbled computer to work with, probably any password unlock program, but since I had been unsuccessful with Pogo in viral mode - and tried and retried many, many many unsuccessful things - I decided after partially fixing the virus problem to also try one of the other password unlock programs, just in case pogo was also not getting it done.

Thanks again for coming to my aid. Since, according to Zoinks I may have caused the NBR outage, and then this stuff happened, I can honestly say this has been a bad week. Now that I know I didn't type in the wrong password, twice, but just used my Z in a hotel room in NYC with my anti-virus program in the off position, I only feel like half a dope.

Louche, your posts are always helpful; I really did (almost) fall on the floor laughing out loud, and that's at least as good as unlocking my computer and curing it of a virus.

 

Just download hiren's bootcd and use one of the many win7 password removal tools on there. I've used them, they work!