Startup Password required

[swatangelfire]

my father in law uses his new dell inspiron 15r running on windows 8 when someone phone our home from microsoft and ask him to follow instructions and he did. at the end of there conversations he was asked to pay 49 euros to activate the computer. i tried to reformat but it doesnt allow me to do anything until we have the password.. please can you help me what to do thanks a lot...

 

[David Bailey]

You got scammed.

 

[Ztruker]

When does it ask for the password?

 

[MohavePC]

Ok new information. Did not help me perse but might be usefull to others.

Windows has a function called doskey.
With this doskey you can encrypt your user password database and give a boot password.
That is what the "guys from microsoft" did.
You can even save your password on a external drive.
The thing to do is put in a windows install cd, which I cannot get to boot.
choose the recover option and try to reset your system to a earlier date
and everything runs again,
I my case the guys deleted the system restore backups too.
Will have to pull data and Bootnuke then rebuild I guess as I see to options to disable the doskey.