[kbob]

I offered to help my sister get all of her personal information off of her laptop, so that she can sell it.
It's an older Dell, running Windows 98. She had 2 users listed. Whenever you start the computer, it asks for the password for one of the users. My sister has not used the laptop much lately - because she has a desktop. And so she has forgotten the password. When you hit cancel, windows comes up fine. I went into users in the control panel and deleted the user that asks for the password. I shut down and started up again, and it still asks for the password for the user that I deleted. Is it safe to delete the other user she has listed? And when I did a search (files and folders) on her name, about 15 files came up that I have'nt figured out how to open.

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On Windows 98 you can reset users' passwords by searching the computer for *.pwl files and deleting them.

Edited by Comnir, 28 May 2006 - 05:41 AM.

[Comnir]

On Windows 98 you can reset users' passwords by searching the computer for *.pwl files and deleting them.

Edited by Comnir, 28 May 2006 - 05:41 AM.

[Tyger]

If you have the installation disk and know the ProductKey (very important) the safest way to remove the personal information is to format the disk and reinstall windows. You could also just format the drive and let the buyer reinstall Windows. Personal info resides in many places in the machine, the Registry, in Outlook Express and other places and just deleting the pass word log is not enough. Win98 is easily hacked and very accessible. The biggest difficulty in reinstalling is getting all the drivers for the hardware, but if it's the maker's disk they should all be there.

[moondog830]

I thought this might be the best place to post this, as I can't figure where else to go with it. I just dug one of my old computers (used for storage and such, but not in the last 2 years). I want to give this computer to my daughter in Florida, but can't for the life of me figure out what my password is and can't find my freakin' disks either. Apparently I failed to ask the wife help me store this stuff. She would've made sure I had all of it somewhere safe.
Is there any way that I can 'bypass' the password so that I can send it to her and let her set it up how she wants it?

dog