Laptop locked

[plunkarl]

My son's laptop was locked due to too many password attempts. He changed it a few days back but couldn't remember it clearly. It is a Windows 7 laptop.

How can I remove or crack the password?

[snowblizz]

It's super easy to do so on any Win7 and newer machine you have physical access to. The problem is, that probably falls under Inappropriate Topics.

Also I've never heard of vanilla Windows locking due to too many attempts at login. That is to say, if someone has set a limit maybe that person needs to involved in unsetting it.

Basically you can quite easily find out how to do this by searching the net. I'm not comfortable with telling random people how to defeat even the rudimentary Windows security.

[Brother Oni]

Also I've never heard of vanilla Windows locking due to too many attempts at login. That is to say, if someone has set a limit maybe that person needs to involved in unsetting it.

In corporate and some university environments, there's an admin setting where a user's account would be locked for a while if they got their Windows password wrong three times in a row (usually 20-30 minutes).

If it's that, then just wait out the timer then try again; if it's still locked then someone with an administrator account needs to log into the PC and unlock it. The alternative is to break the security as you've said.

[Roland St. Jude]

Sheriff: I think I'm going to lock this preemptively before anyone gets themselves into trouble.