Cannot Access User Account

[DetectiveQueen]

Hello my niece was messing with my old laptop and now I cannot access my user account on there. I know the password for the account, but when I go to login it wont let me login. It tells me The Password you entered is incorrect. Reset Password?

Now let me explain what I have done (so far), as I do know a lot about computers, I just dont know what I am doing wrong.

1. Attempted to use a password recovery via USB.
   • I got a USB drive that has nothing on it, formatted it, and attempted to install the password recovery drive via the Microsoft website (and other 3rd-party means), but kept getting the error of said file not being found. (I attempted this 3 different times).
2. Gone into Recovery Mode and went to the Command Prompt setting.
   • I did net user and looked for my account but got the error The command completed with one or more errors with the computer name also not being there, showing only as User accounts for \\. (Nothing showing after the \\, which I believe may be the thing causing most of the issues)
     
   • I did net user Administrator /active:yes and than net user Administrator 0000 to attempt to log into the Administrator to gain access to the computer but when trying to log into the account, it would not allow me to switch the account to the Administrator account to login. As the Switch User option was not there for me to switch the user account trying to login.
   • I tried creating a new account using net user BasicUser 0000 /add with an error being received saying The user was successfully created but could not be added to the USERS local group. Which makes sense as it is in Recovery mode so Command Prompt does not have access to all the commands to alter the computer.

The only thing I have not tried, and honestly dont want to do is factory resetting the laptop. It is an old laptop, and I have a new laptop, but there are documents on there I am trying to retrieve from it, hence the reason why I am not just throwing the computer into the dumpster right now. And also the reason why I dont want to go to a technician just for them to fix a computer that is going to be thrown away.

If y'all could help me, that would be most amazing! Thank you!

[MarcusC]

Hey @DetectiveQueen 🙂

Thank you for visiting the HP Support Community.

According to the Community's Rules of Participation:

4d. No posts shall include instructions or directions intended to bypass or subvert security measures, including passwords, locking mechanisms, fingerprint scans, etc., or to bypass any safety measures.

Therefore, this topic is being locked. If you would like help resetting the password on your product, please Contact HP support in your region. 

Regards,

MarcusC