Author Archives: admin

How to Find Windows 8 Product Key for Pre-installed Computer

If your PC came pre-installed with Windows 7 or an earlier version, the product key is printed on a metal plate on the back or bottom of the computer. But that’s not the case if your PC came with Windows 8 or 8.1.

PC manufacturers now embed the Windows 8 product key into the BIOS/UEFI firmware on the motherboard. Here I’m going to show you how to find Windows 8 product key for a pre-installed computer. This method also works even if you’ve formatted your hard drive.

How to Find Windows 8 Product Key for Pre-installed Computer?

Download the KeyFinder Plus program and save it to the desktop of your PC. After the download is complete, double-click the setup file to install it.
Launch the KeyFinder Plus program and Click on Start Recovery button. Select “From current system” from the drop-down menu.
The program begins to read the BIOS/UEFI firmware and extract the embedded Windows 8 OEM product key, and also scan the Windows registry and find CD keys for current Windows installation, Office and other commercial softwares installed on your computer.
After recovering, click on Save To File button and you can export the recovered product keys to a text file for safe keeping.

I’ve tested it on several Windows 8 pre-installed machine and have confirmed that the product key retrieved within the tool is accurate.

Reset Windows 8/7 Password without Any Reset Disk

Forgot your Windows 8 or 7 password and don’t have a password reset disk? There are many free and paid third-party tools that can help you remove or crack a forgotten Windows password. More often than not, those tools require you to firstly create a bootable CD/USB on a spared PC. However, what to do if you don’t have a spare PC laying around?

As long as you have a Windows installation disc, you can use it to reset lost Windows 8/7 password for free, without using any reset disk or third-party software.

How to Reset Windows 8/7 Password without Any Reset Disk?

Boot your locked Windows computer from your installation disc. Once the message “Press any key to boot from CD…..” appears, press Enter to continue. After a while, you’ll get to the Windows Setup screen.

windows-setup

Press the SHIFT + F10 key combination to bring up the Command Prompt.

command-prompt

Use the dir command to find out which driver letter is your desired Windows installation. In my example, D:\ is my Windows 8 system drive.

find-system-drive

Navigate to the /Windows/system32 folder. Rename sethc.exe (Sticky Keys application) to sechc.exe.bak as a backup file, then run the “copy /y cmd.exe sethc.exe” command to replace the Sticky Keys application with the Command Prompt (cmd.exe).

replace-sethc

Now close the Command Prompt and cancel the Windows Installation. Eject the installation disc and reboot your computer.

exit-windows-setup

When your computer boots to Windows login screen, press the SHIFT key 5 times in quick succession. This will open up the Command Prompt which runs with system privileges, instead of Sticky Keys application. You can then use the net user command to set a new password to any Windows user account.

reset-windows-password

Congratulation! Now exit the Command Prompt and you can then log into Windows with your new password.

How to Reset Lost SA Password on SQL Server 2012

Lost or forgot your SQL Server 2012 password? How to connect to SQL Server if SA account is locked out or disabled?

This is a common problem which is frequently asked in many sites. Many people forget their password shortly after installing Microsoft SQL Server or they have not used SQL Server after a long time. In this tutorial we’ll show you how to reset lost SA password using Windows Authentication mode or third party software.

Method 1: Reset Lost SA Password Using Windows Authentication

Open SQL Server Management Studio, and select the authentication mode: Windows Authentication.
Now click on the Connect button and you will be taken to the SQL Server Management Studio.
In Object Explorer, expand Security, expand Logins, right-click sa, and then click Properties.
On the General page, you can create and confirm a new password for the login. If your SA account is locked out or disabled, switch to the Status page. Set “Login” to “Enabled” and uncheck “Login is locked out”. Click OK.

Method 2: Reset Lost SA Password with Software

If you’re unable to login with Windows Authentication and lost sysadmin privileges to your database, then it’s a good idea to try the third-party software – SQL Server Password Changer. The program enables you to unlock / reset forgotten SA password on all SQL editions, including SQL Server 2012.

SQL Server logins are stored in the master database (master.mdf). In SQL Server 2012, you can find the master.mdf file in the directory of C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL11.MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL\DATA. Before resetting SA password, you need to stop your SQL Server instance if it’s running.

Download and install SQL Server Password Changer on your server. Start the program and click on the “Open File” button. In the pop-up dialog, select the master.mdf file for your SQL Server instance and click Open. The program will extract all your SQL Server user accounts from the master.mdf file.

Choose the SA account and click on “Change Password” button. In the Change Password dialog, enter a new password for your SA account and click OK. The program will update the password hashes for your login, and unlock SA account when it is locked out or disabled.

Now start your SQL Server instance and you can then log into SA account using your specified new password. That’s it!

Reset Windows 7 Admin Password with Ubuntu Live CD/USB

Have you forgotten your Windows 7 password? If the administrator account you are trying to access has been disabled, expired, locked out or simply reject your password, you’ll lose control and can’t install software, update drivers or do any kind of administration whatsoever.

Don’t panic. Just boot your computer from a Ubuntu Live CD or USB drive, and then run the chntpw program which enables you to unlock / reset forgotten Windows admin password. The following tutorial will walk you through the procedure to reset Windows 7 admin password with Ubuntu Live CD/USB drive.

How to Reset Windows 7 Admin Password with Ubuntu Live CD/USB?

Boot the machine that you’re having trouble with from Ubuntu live disk. If you don’t have one, you can create a Ubuntu Live USB drive with the freeware Universal USB Installer.

After booting into Ubuntu, open the web browser to download chntpw from the Ubuntu Universe repository: http://packages.ubuntu.com/lucid/chntpw.

Scroll down to the download section and grab the chntpw setup package. If your Ubuntu is 64-bit, please use the 64-bit version instead. Once it’s downloaded, double-click on the downloaded file to install it on your Ubuntu live disk.

By default the system will automatically mounted the hard disk partition where Windows 7 is installed, and you can access the Windows partition from Places menu. Click on your hard disk and navigate to the SAM file where Windows stores your Windows login password.

Right-click on the SAM file and select Properties. In the Properties dialog, note down the file location which will be used in the next step.

Now press the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Alt + T to launch a Terminal window. Since we have to make changes to Security Accounts Manager (SAM), which is residing in Windows/System32/config folder. Run this command to navigate to the config folder:
cd /media/<drive_identifier>/WINDOWS/system32/config

To reset the administrator password, enter following command to run chntpw tool:
sudo chntpw -u Administrator SAM

Chntpw will show all the configured Windows user accounts with their current status. It presents 4 different Windows user account tweaking options at the bottom, including clear / blank user password, Set a new password / edit password, promote user to administrator, and unlock locked or disabled user account. Type 1 and press Enter.

Once you’ve cleared the user account password, type y to save your changes.

Reboot your system, and plug out Ubuntu Live media disk. You can then log in to Windows without a password!

Conclusion

While Ubuntu Live CD is widely used to troubleshoot PC problems, you can use it to reset Windows 7 administrator passwords as well. Follow this tutorial and you can regain access to your computer on your own when you forgot the password. No need to pay a premium price to one of the geek squad out there to take care of it for you.

Create A Bootable Ubuntu USB Flash Drive

How can I recover data from a PC that won’t boot? Just boot your computer from Ubuntu Live USB drive and you can access all files on your hard drive. This can give you a chance to fix your computer issue, or just to backup all of your files before reinstalling Windows or attempting to repair the Windows installation.

In this post I’ll show you how to create a bootable Ubuntu USB flash drive with Universal USB Installer. Universal USB Installer is a free Linux bootdisk creator that allows you to choose from a selection of Linux Distributions to put on your USB Flash Drive.

How to Create A Bootable Ubuntu USB Flash Drive?

Universal USB Installer doesn’t require installation. Just download the application and run it.
Select Ubuntu from the drop-down box, and then click on Browse to specify an Ubuntu ISO image. If you don’t have one, use the program’s built-in download link to grab a copy of Ubuntu ISO image.
Select the drive letter that corresponds to the USB drive that you want to put Ubuntu on.
Click on the Create button. The program will extract the Ubuntu ISO image and copy the files to your USB drive.
When the installer completes, click the Close button.

Now you can use the Ubuntu Live USB drive to boot the computer that you’re having trouble with, and troubleshoot your system issue or backup your important files.

Chntpw Review

chntpw (also known as Offline NT Password & Registry Editor) is a free software utility for resetting or blanking local passwords used by Windows 8, 7, Vista, XP and 2000. It does this by editing the SAM database where Windows stores password hashes.

It has become more and more popular because it can run under many Linux-based operating systems including Debian, Ubuntu, BackTrack, Fedora, Knoppix, Linux Mint. Now it has already been included in the most popular system repair discs such as Ultimate Boot CD (UBCD), Trinity Rescue CD, System Rescue CD, Ubuntu live CD, Hiren’s BootCD, etc.

chntpw is a Linux program that comes with a commmand line interface. It’s pretty straightforward, especially if you use interactive mode. chntpw can be used to edit the Windows registry, reset a user password, and promote a user to administrator, as well as several other useful options.

The main weaknesses is that chntpw doesn’t have a GUI interface that may be a litter difficult for computer novices. It does not work on Windows 8 Microsoft account, as well as domain accounts on domain controller. But overall it is an amazing Windows password recovery tool which allows you to remove, bypass, unlock and reset Windows login password. This is really useful when you need to regain access to your PC after forgotten the password.