Installed Windows 8 on my desktop. Bought another licence (download) for my wife's laptop. Everything went fine until I used netplwiz to change her to the administrator and only user. I thought that went ok but now she is the only user and I'm being prompted for a password everywhere which doesn't work. I can't even run a third party application from a thumb drive. I wouldn't mind reinstalling Windows 8 if that's the fix but I couldn't find the executable after it downloaded and installed. I probably wouldn't be able to execute it anyway without admin privileges. Tried to buy yet a third copy of Windows 8 to reinstall on the laptop and I couldn't even do that without admin privileges.
Anyone have any suggestions to recover or reset the admin password or how to reinstall Windows 8?
You might see if you may be able to use OPTION TWO in the tutorial below to enable the built-in Administrator account at boot. Afterwards, sign in to it, and see if you may be able to change the password, make sure your account's type is administrator, or what you need to do to fix this.
Shawn; thanks for the quick reply. BUT, starting a command prompt from boot is asking for the admin password. Also, typing regedit from the desktop (run) shows me the registry but when I go to load hive it asks for the admin password again. No go on either options.
While signed in to her account, check in User Accounts (control panel) to see if shows that she is an Administrator. If so, then see if you can click on the Change the password link to change her password. Sometimes changing the password will help with this issue.
It doesn't say she is administrator but it's the only account so I assume it is administrator. I changed he password but that didn't help with the admin password issue. I can't do anything else in there (change account type). It asks for the admin password.
Any idea how I would reinstall windows 8 when I don't have the download file and even trying to buy a new copy on the Microsoft site is asking for the admin password.
Nope. If it doesn't have Administrator for her account like in my screenshot above, then her account is only a standard account type.
Where did you buy your Windows 8 from? If from Microsoft, then you should have a link in the email they sent you for where to download the installation file againg.
I bought Windows 8 from Microsoft. On the receipt there is a link to download again. When I put in my product key I get a message "you must be logged on as a member of the administrators group of this computer in order to run this application".
Seems I can't even reinstall Windows. Is the laptop now a doorstop?
BTW, when I keep being asked for the admin password it shows "MicrosoftAccount\her name" and then it wants a password so I'm still thinking she must be the administrator. Can there only be one user and that user isn't the administrator? Doesn't matter - password doesn't work.
See if you may be able to do a system restore at boot using a restore point (if available) dated before this all happened to see if it may be able to help.
Worse case scenario, you could get/order a DVD copy of Windows 8, or an ISO download of Windows 8 to be able to create a bootable DVD/USB with. Use it or a Windows 7 installation disc to format the laptop, then boot from the Windows 8 DVD/USB to install Windows 8.
Shawn; I had already tried system restore. It needed the admin password.
Her laptop is on my network for wifi and printing. Maybe I should have said this as maybe that's part of the problem. I went to my desktop. She's listed as an administrator as well. Changed her to a user and back to administrator. I went to her laptop. Changed her from Microsoft account to local user. Changed her back to Microsoft account and the password that was recently changed didn't work. Got a new one from Microsoft. Rebooted and for some reason netplwiz worked again - no admin password needed???. Looked in there and there I was again listed as an administrator. If I remember, I don't think she was listed as admin as you said. We are both admin now and everything is working. I have no idea why I (my user) showed up again. Me initially removing it caused the problem.
Thanks for your help, Shawn. Your site is great and IMHO so is Windows 8. Trouble in this case was user caused.
