Believe me or not, this is a legit request for help I have a school laptop. it has windows 7 enterprise that I have tried to get access to using bootable CD password utils on to change/elevate accounts however, it's different to windows 7, the hive is different or accounts are not found. The laptop is my kids. She has finished school and wants to keep using the laptop. I own the lap top. Paid off. I cant get the school to unlock it, they have changed platforms. I'd like to recover her files, give her the ability to log in and install applications however, I can't get in to it, I don't have access to school domain or key ring however they do it. Is there a way or is she stuffed, am I stuffed. If I re-install windows 7, I loose all her data. Ideas are appreciated.!! p.s. I am able to remove the HDD and read it from a usb dongle. it's a 2.8" microdrive. I have tried to load the hive from SAM module in windows/system32 trying to activate the local administrator account however, it won't allow it after any changes, I reboot, it's still domain locked somehow. No Local access to administrator etc..
why dont you just backup the drive say with image for widows and mount the backup and export the user account files...
She wants to keep using it with her installed apps. I did make an image in case i stuff it up completely.... hdd's raw copy tool. i can write the .img file back to hdd if i wreck it. All her programs are in this install, so, re-installing windows is not an option really. I don't have the application program installs, never will. School has/had them. I think she has a bunch of stuff, maths wizard, photoshop etc, all installed by the school but not left on the PC after the install. Must be on their servers. They can't help, or won't. I can get her documents, but she wants to use it, the applications. We don't have all this software to re-install if I do re-install the OS. Heck I don't know half of what it is installed apart from photoshop. It's an old HP elite ultrabook if that helps at all...
I don't have the apps to re-install on it once the OS is fresh. That's my issue. I don't even know half of the programs she uses on it. The only familiar ones are Ms office and photoshop. There's a whole heap of others I am not familiar with. Heck, I don't have photoshop anyway. She has a proper license installed on the laptop, the license is paid off over the years, we had to pay 4k each year for the upkeep until she finished, got the option to buy it or give it back. she wanted to keep using it so, we bought it. now she wants to use it at uni and install other programs. Yeah, that went well...not I thought they unlocked these things when you left!! Anyway, apparently they are on windows 8 or some such crap and haven't got the way to unlock the older version, which seems like complete BS to me, they just don't want to help. So, now I google and ended up here, actually, a friend suggested I post here. I have had no issue doing similar on windows 7 ultimate before (unlocked it for a friend once) but this is a totally different beastie it seems. anyway, i'm stumped, out of ideas.
it's $500US that's insane. is there no cheaper way? we already spent a fortune on this thing during her high school education. Not that I don't appreciate your help. I'm just over paying for this thing. I had to have the screen replaced end of year and that cost me $250 and i thought it was all covered in maintenance contract. how do they expect kids not to damage things. i thought that was the point of buying it through the school, not that they allowed us to get one outside the school anyway. Such a rip-off. I fixed her fan for $20 when it went bad last year. they were going to charge over $100
Thanks Yen. I'll give it a go. I can modify the files from the drive using the usb dongle so should be easier than booting from a CD. I'll post back my results! I have a dd image of the drive in case i stuff it, i can re-image it if it goes bad.
One thing you could also do if you like to keep that ol;d apps, use Windows Easy Transfer! with that you could "export" the whole HDD to an external storage, re-install a normal Windows 7 version (same 32bit platform) and re-insert from the exports image all pps you'll like to keep in the new one. And for to be really sure, I would also suggest to create an HDD Iamge from the Laptops HDD in case anything goes wrong so could "restore" the HDD from that Image.
Unfortunately Easy Transfer Wiazard doesn't get the installed applications and their licenses to re-install. It's locked down anyway so doesn't work. I'll try Yen's suggestion. Got to wait till I get to work tomorrow. That's where I left the drive plugged in. PickMeApp looked interesting(tries to capture installed applications) however, i'm sure it doesn't know half these applications either.....
Sounds like it's time to make a fuss at the next meeting of the School Board and politely demand that they either refund your money or make it work. "They changed platforms" is no excuse for selling you a boat anchor!
OP said that he owns the laptop, but not the licenses....I guess it are school licenses which are not transferable and the client has no local accounts since the accounts are administrated @ server side (PDC)....means you can only login @PDC (domain) serving the account data... The trick I have posted should work. Anyway the w7 enterprise license will probably expire sooner or later since it has to contact its intra KMS host...assuming an KMS activation.
As it's an Enterprise version, it's an Corporate/Academic with either MAK or KMS activated, later, me think! If KMS activated, it's possible that the Activation-Check is set to let say 30 day's instead of 180, same as we'd don at a few corporate customers (for laptops only)! We also had set the Activation-Check possible via LAN only and NOT via WAN/Internet and WiFi! At the school they would not give out the required informations!
Bear with me, I didn't read everyone's replies to your issue. If you can boot up to a Windows login screen then you could replace sticky keys with CMD while in hirens or w/e. Press shift 5+ times and bam, command prompt. Type "Net User Administrator /active" type "Net User Administrator *" and enter the password you want TWICE. It will not type it out so just enter it like normal. From there you should be able to restart, login as local admin and then make some changes.