How can I retrieve an admin account on Pavilion 15 Smartprotect?

[SandraVR]

My Mum's laptop was used by my son, who accidentally deleted the administrator account. The laptop is now unaccessible. In addition, he has also forgotten his password. The laptop was brought to Israel from Belgium, where it was first purchased, without any installation software.

The laptop is a Pavilion 15 Smartprotect from 2014; I am aware that this is ancient for a laptop, but Mum hardly ever used it, it still looks great and it ought to be working great, too; it has a ton of storage space and is equipped with BeatsAudio for sound. I want my 8-year old granddaughter to have it as her first computer.

I have tried the recovery manager, but there are key compnonents missing.

I suppose I should first tackle the password issue, since I cannot at all access anything on the computer without it, then find a way to recover or reinstate the admin account.

I do not care about anything that might be stored on the drive, except for the OS, of course.

Help?

Many thanks in advance, Sandra

[WAWood]

The only way I know you can get an HP laptop without any installation software is if you get one without Windows on it -- and that would be FreeDOS -- and that would require really MAJOR work to then load Windows on it -- which I am guessing, since you did not mention it, you did NOT have to do.  So, most likely, it DID come with Windows preladed.

And if it was 2015, that predated Win10, so it was probably Win8.  That's a problem because I know of no place that still carries Win8 where you can get a download or disk in order to reinstall it.

Also, any Windows laptop since Win7 has a HIDDEN Admin account -- which your son could NOT have deleted -- but without access to the laptop, you can't unhide it in order to change the passwords of the other accounts.

We are not permitted to help you resetting your password because we have no way to verify ownership of the computer.

Therefore, you would have to take your laptop to a local laptop repair shop and they might be able to get you access -- but you will have to pay them for this service.