locked out of Win 7 32-bit laptop

Hello,

I hope this is the right forum for my question...

We have an old 2003 HP Pavilion 32-bit laptop with native XP at my office. At some point it was upgraded to Win 7. We have the original XP installation disks, but no Win 7 disk.

A couple of years ago the laptop was cleaned up and repurposed to a third party. After a time, they returned the laptop, saying thanks anyway, but it was too old to run the software they wanted. It was set aside for several months.

Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago, when we wanted to use the laptop to run a projector. But wait - there's an unfamiliar user account that's password protected, and no way to retrieve the password!

I've researched the situation, and believe I can reset the password with a Win 7 Repair disk. The problem is I don't have a 32-bit Win 7 computer available to create the disk.

So my question is: is it possible to create the disk I need without a Win 7 32-bit computer to create it on?

RolandJS said:

Admin/Mods -- are we allowed to mention a common way to unlock computers' User Account/Windows?

Yes.

For the sake of clarity - I'm not asking how to bypass the password. I'm asking how to create a Windows repair disk for an operating system other than that which I am using.

Do you just need to disk to do the password reset? if so I can recommend Kyhi's rescue disk which has the tools to do that - Windows 10 Recovery Tools - Bootable Rescue Disk - Windows 10 Forums

It's been a long time but I seem to remember you can just use a Windows 7 install iso as a repair disk, you can download a fresh Windows 7 ISO direct from microsoft using the tool on the following page - Microsoft Windows and Office ISO Download Tool

Yes, the main reason I need the disk is so I can reset the password. Once I have it, it will certainly go into our resource file, and I will be ensuring we have Repair disks for our current computers to avoid any similar situations in the future.

Thank you for the links, which I'm reviewing now.

Do you have only one account with admin rights?

There was just the one user account with admin rights. Thank you for the links.

I have reset the password AND created a Repair disk and a password reset disk to prevent this from happening again.

Even though my issue is resolved, I'd still like to know the answer to my question, which was whether there is a way to create a Repair disk for an OS different from the computer being used.