Cannot access Windows 7 PC

[pdowd]

I am the I.T. department for an ophthalmology private practice. I'm new to this role here and have inherited a great many things. One of those is a series of HP / Windows 7 PCs. Currently, I am attempting to repurpose one of those PCs. For these machines, there is no historical trail whatsoever. I have neither the discs, nor the passwords to the accounts currently installed (including Admin password that is local to the machine).

All I really wish to do is restore the machine to factory default. However, I cannot access any user account on the machine. I know that there are many solutions out there, but cost is an issue as budgetary constraints require cost neutral options as frequently as possible.

Can someone recommend a way for me to prompt the machine to begin a restore, or even to just reset the passwords? Any help would be greatly appreciated. The product sticker on the machine states Windows 7 Pro OA.

-pete

 

[Brink]

Hello Pete, and welcome to Seven Forums.

The link below at HP can help show you how to do a factory recovery at boot or with the recovery discs. You'll need to scroll down a bit to see those sections.

HP Support document - HP Support Center

Hope this helps,

 

[Total]

I have used this before to reset passwords on computers Offline Windows Password & Registry Editor

(Option Five)
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/238737-user-account-reset-password-windows-7-a.html

 

[gregrocker]

If it has a readable Product Key on the COA sticker then you can also do a Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 without the HP bloatware. Everything needed is in the blue link.

This is a much preferred install to the factory pre-install which with HP has the worst load of bloatware in the industry, including duplicate utilities which interfere with better versions built into Win7.

Once you get a model install for your company you can capture it in a backup image, generalize it using SysPrep to move HD to another computer then deploy it to other PC's as needed.