I forgot my Windows 7 password, what are my options?

oscer1 said:

i would of check the bios and make sure usb legacy support was enabled. but post back what the shop found.

I wanted to update. I just got my desktop back from my local shop. They had to remove my HDD and had to hook it up to their equipment to reset the password. What all they did, I have no idea. I ended up getting this done for free as it took them a couple days to do it. At first they tried charging me $60.

When I got my PC home, I wanted to see if I was still having issues with the mouse and keyboard and how they where not working in Safe Mode(s) and during installations, especially when I put in my Windows 7 CD. Whatta ya know, I hit F8, Safe Mode w/ Command Prompt and my wireless mouse & keyboard worked. I then put in the Win7 CD and my kb & mouse worked fine. Any idea what was going on with this or what it could of been? I'd still like to troubleshoot this to figure out what was causing the issues, I have a feeling it'll happen again. Did I select the wrong option or something when I booted from my disk? When I press F11 I see these options:

AHCI P3: ASUS BW-12B1ST a
AHCI P4: WDC
AHCI P1: CRUCIAL-240M500SSD1
UEFI (FAT): ASUS BW-12B1ST a

I kept selecting the first choice, but the kb/mouse would never work that route. What does AHCI & UEFI mean? Also confused on my Bluray is popping up twice.

I also had a few questions about backing my PC up at this little incident kind of freaked me out, being my first built PC and all.
- I wanted to backup Win7, when I do it through the Control Panel it asks if I want to backup on DVD's or create an image, which is better? When I selected DVD, it said it was going to backup my SSD, HDD and some other files but it would be 158GB possibly, that is way too my disks. Do I even need to backup my HDD? Win7 is installed on the SSD.
- Do you recommend I take any other precautions, backing up anything, etc.? Would like to be ready in case anything else like this happens or anything worse.

Thanks again for all the help, really appreciate it.

AddRAM said:

How do you forget a password you use everyday ?

There is no reason to put a password on a home desktop pc.

I'm not home and my 5yr old likes to play with expensive items. He's not stupid and knows how to work a computer. It wasn't a password I used everyday, I had to change it for security reasons. I created a difficult password, wrote it down and misplaced it, I was rushing. It does happen, to a lot of people, a lot more than you may think. I'm also glad I did forgot the password because it altered me to the bigger issue with the keyboard and mouse not working in any of the safe modes. I still can't figure out why this was happening.

Kaktussoft said:

usb mouse and keyboard still not working in winpe mode?
Does USB work in winpe mode? for example connect an extern usb disk drive and check if you can access the files.

Sure it is an usb2 port?

What is WindowsPE? I have an external hdd I can plug-in via USB, is that what your telling me to do, to boot up in winpe and see if I can check the external?