Unexpected Security Lockout

[Nex Shwayze]

Hello All,

 

         The start begins here, my buddy's mother works at a school and the school ended up giving her a laptop since they were upgrading at the time, his mom had no use for it since she had the school's desktop and this is how my friend has come into possession of it. My buddy is not very Tech-Savvy at all and attempted to remove a virus from his computer and accidentally removed his account from the computer which only has one user, the account was the school's Admin account and now he cannot do anything, not even create an account. I attempted to remedy this also by telling him to just factory reset the laptop and a working version of windows will be recognized and activated with his new account set up as is with all factory resets, when he goes into the F11 options, it will not open, which is the recovery menu which houses the "Factory Reset" function we would need, he can enter the boot menu and change value's there, but I don't know how to utilize the "Boot menu" for this circumstance, I'm willing to buy him a new HDD for the computer, but I would rather not, so any ideas on this matter. How would we wipe the HDD to "Factory New"?, or make a new account on the laptop?

 

The Laptop is: hp probook 4545s

http://www.cnet.com/products/hp-probook-4545s-15-6-a-series-a6-4400m-windows-7-pro-64-bit-4-gb-ram-500-gb-hdd-series/specs/

 

Thank's.

 

~Nex Shwayze~

[JakeNTech]

If it was still locked to the school chances are that there are measures in place to prevent people from doing what you are attempting to do. This is because they want the laptop to be rendered useless if it is stolen. So to be honest it's not worth it. You could get a new HDD and a new copy of windows but there is probably a bios lock too. Its not worth it. sorry. And to do a factor reset you will need a account password and probably a windows disk. BUT try to boot the laptop and hold down F8  and boot into safe mode so you can create a admin account. Follow this link

[VulcanAndroid]

In the end this computer needs a wipe and reload. Who knows what the school put on the system.

[Nex Shwayze]

@fixitnow 

 

A bit more information: To do the above advised course of action, "F8 into Safe Mode" we would need a account present on the computer, the computer had one account and it was the admin, so how would we access it without an account? There is not to be a Bios lock on the computer. If I was to just purchase another HDD and take the other one out could I wipe the SSD using a Sata->usb 3.0 connector from my disk manager on my laptop and insert that one back in with a Windows 7.1 iso and install it with a Win key to be operational.

 

Thanks.

 

~Nex Shwayze~

[KuJoe]

You cannot delete the admin account, just disable it. Chances are the main admin account (Administrator) is still on the OS but it's usually not advertised anywhere unless you go looking for it. If the school was smart, it was renamed when it was imaged though so you'll have to find out from somebody at the school what the account is if they're even allowed to tell you.

 

One thing to note, wiping the hard drive might not fix the problem. I have an HP EliteBook from work and I tried replacing the hard drive with an SSD which wouldn't work and actually locked down the laptop until I could bring it into the office and re-image it. I don't know if it's HP specific but there's some nice security features that prevent you from using the laptop with a different hard drive other than the one the image was installed on, similar (in practice) to how you can set your cell phone to not accept SIM cards other than your own so people can't just steal your phone and put their own SIM card in it and start using it like their own.

 

Your surest, easiest, and (hopefully) cheapest option is to contact the school, get in touch with their IT department and explain the situation and see if they're willing to help you or at least point you in the right direction. You can take a gamble and go buy a hard drive and hope it works, but if it doesn't you've got 2 paperweights instead of one (although the hard drive can be used later if you want to buy an enclosure).

 

EDIT: Correction, after some digging it looks like you CAN delete the administrator account through the command line, very weird since it's so easy to disable via a Group Policy update.

[Nex Shwayze]

I'm going to attempt to activate the Admin account using the above option, if not I will post on here with the newly found information. Either way the new HDD will be cheep, and I don't mind having a few of those laying around, Win key's either. 

[KuJoe]

Another thing I just thought about was go download this and try to boot to it: http://www.ubcd4win.org/

 

I use it at home and work all of the time but if the laptop is locked down then it might not boot to it. I use it to reset the administrator account all of the time so it might be able to add an account also or at least check if the administrator account is there.