Need help logging into Windows 7

I have managed to lock myself out of my laptop and can't find a (free?) way around it. I've googled, searched videos, had my kids search (they are so much faster :) ), so now I'm desperate enough to post about it. Embarrassing, because after so many years on various Windows platforms I should know better than to put myself in this situation.

I frequently put passwords on our various computers when the kids take advantage of computer time. I take them off, put them back on, change them etc all the time. So this time when I added a password (my laptop has been password-free for awhile), I didn't pay attention to the window that popped up even though it didn't look familiar as part of the password process I was used to. It said something about Administrator, that's all I remember (that's the embarrassing part - I should have paid attention ). I clicked ok or whatever button to finish the password set up.

Then next morning when we turned the computer on, it asked for a User Name and Password. I'm used to seeing the User Name already displayed with space for the password only, so this was different. I typed in the User Name (we only have one user on that computer) and tried the password, didn't work. Tried all sorts of combinations, initial cap, all cap (in case I inadvertently had caps on), misspellings. Tried various User Names, too, such as Admin, Administrator with the password, with no passwords, any possible defaults I found online. Nothing has worked.

So I am hoping someone knows what happened. Any idea what that pop-up window might have been? That may have been the cause of this problem.

Any idea how to work it out? I know the password I chose, so that's not the issue (unless i happened to make the same typo twice, I suppose).

Note that we have no Windows discs. None of the 3 laptops came with discs, and we were unlucky to always get error messages when trying to create recovery discs

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you for your quick response.

If you re-read my post, I do have the password. I just don't know what the problem is re some kind of setting change that I may have inadvertently made while setting the password.

bigmck said:

According to Forum Rules, we are not allowed to give help on this type of thing. I can tell you that if you Google "lost password", you will find the answer quite easily. Thanks,

If you inserted password into a prompt you didn't pay attention to but said something about Adminstrator, then it was probably User Accounts permission box to allow changing the password. If you didn't then change the password you may have only answered the User Account permission prompt. Try the old password.

What I do in such cases is boot into Built-in Administrator - Enable from WinRE from the DVD or Repair CD and make my corrections, if necessary establish a new User account to replace the one if it's no longer accessible.