So if you follow me on Twitter you’ll have figured out the title and why I didn’t post yesterday (ok, I have been getting slack of late, but this time it wasn’t my fault!). Yep, I got locked out of my own laptop.

See, I was trying to delete a folder on Windows Vista (what my laptop uses), but of course, only certain folders can be deleted with an administrator password. I set one, thinking it was a ‘create and forget’ password, completely obliterating the number of times I’ve actually used passwords with Vista and knew better than to take it as forgettable… and when I went to bed, I had forgotten all about it. I woke up of course, to discover my computer password-protected, with no hope of remembering the password (it was complete gibberish with a few numbers; nothing at all I’m ever going to crack by trial and error) and the hint that I’d given myself was so completely wrong (supposedly a homophone of sorts, but again utter gibberish) that after an hour of trying to crack it I gave up.

There is of course, a reset password link on Vista. Unfortunately, you have to be smart enough ahead of time to create a password reset disk - something that Vista doesn’t even warn you about before creating an admin password - and yeah, I didn’t do that. I was screwed.

The only luck is that I live in a house where there are other computers, and so I got onto my mum’s desktop to see on the net how I could figure my way back in; and jaw-dropped when I read on Microsoft’s help page that the only other thing to do when you lose an admin password is to reinstall Windows.

No way in  am I reinstalling. I’ve got my site files, I’ve got my photos and videos, I’ve got everything on this laptop. (Little me knows better than to never do backups, but unfortunately lately I’ve got so much stuff on here that I can’t even do a backup!)

I started researching other stuff, and discovered you can actually hack your own computer. Which is where the fun started. Because every time I tried to download the files necessary, my mum’s desktop crashed. My dad had a go; but dumped me and left to go out for the afternoon. I did however get back online, and after considerable time spent calming down, had another go.

And this is when I did the stupidest thing of all. I found a program that you have to pay for - frightened of the evil looking hackery text pictured for many of the free programs - only in trying to download from the email receipt I kept getting IE refusals to open the file. Not being able to get it to work, and completely frustrated 6 hours after the whole thing started, I went back and downloaded the ‘free’ version (which only allows you to view the passwords, not actually change them) which accidentally overwrote the paid one. Then of course, when I finally figured out how to get my laptop to boot a CD - another couple of hours wasted - and saw that it was the free one, I kicked myself. And kicked myself again when I discovered that I’d used up all of my download tries thanks to IE.

So naturally, I sent a request for support - the site literally says support 24/7/365, "guaranteed" response in 12 hours, with an average of 40 min response time - and waited… and waited… and waited… and went to bed… and waited… and waited… Well, at this point I’m thinking I might try one of those other programs after all.

I downloaded one, and got it to load, but it couldn’t crack the password. Useless.

I downloaded another (meanwhile burning up perfectly fine CDs), which luckily had step-by-step instructions (no, not on the site you get the program from… the other site that you wouldn’t know about unless you googled it ) and held my breath expecting my computer to go belly up and need to reinstall anyway. 

The process felt like I was doing something, you know, that only computer experts are supposed to do. (It also had that 1970s/80s feel to it, where computers were completely text based) But about 15 minutes later - and about 24 hours later - I got into my computer. Everything’s fine, files are still there, I don’t have a password lock, and I’m back to normal. 

As for that paid program: they eventually got back to me about 3 hours after I got my computer unlocked. They were polite and courteous, but given they had a stupid guarantee (never promise support in a certain timeframe), PLUS a 30 day money back guarantee, I think I’ll be getting my money back. 

The moral of the story: in previous versions of Windows, there was always a hidden admin account that you could log yourself into in cases such as these. Microsoft decided to beef up the security features and in Vista, the account is gone. And with it, any logical way to get back into your computer. Especially illogical given that I would never have set the password if it had warned me about creating a password reset disk. Even more illogical given that you also need what seems like five different ‘oks’ to just change one file or folder setting. (Do I really need to approve the change twice? :no

I’ve never liked Vista, but I now completely join the chorus of "Vista sucks". Two whole days wasted because I couldn’t remember a fricking password!