After getting seeing this (yet again) on message forums, and also getting a personal email about it from a D7 user this morning, I figure maybe I should blog it. I need some feedback on D7 Locksmith anyway.
First, people don’t seem to realize that Windows 8 has two different types of user accounts – a local Windows account, and a Microsoft Live account. I’m not sure why some people haven’t noticed this, but maybe that’s because they are 8-haters and haven’t worked with the OS (or at least performed an install) yet.
Local user accounts – I have yet to test whether D7 Locksmith will work with Windows 8 local user accounts (because on my personal 8 install I decided to try a Live account.) From the login screen if you can access the accessibility options then it should work just fine – though I would appreciate it if someone would test this for me. Someone tested for me, and yes it works! I’ve also not tested other boot disk based password reset utilities as my only Windows 8 laptop is EFI and I haven’t known a disk that will boot and recognize this just yet.
Live user accounts – Live accounts do not store logon credentials in the traditional way – in fact I’m not sure where the credentials are cached – but they are just that (similar to a domain user account) – CACHED. These user accounts will NOT show up in the user list of a boot disk based password reset tool. To clarify, there is NO TOOL out there that I know of that can manipulate the passwords for these user accounts.
How to reset a Live user account password – Simple! Hit up https://account.live.com/password/reset then follow whatever instructions you are presented with. To complete actually login to Windows after the password reset process, the PC MUST be connected to the internet at the login screen. Otherwise Windows can’t check your live account for the new password, and it will require you to login with the lost/forgotten cached password which, if you don’t have, you don’t get in. Period.
You should also expect to see a LOT of Microsoft Live based user accounts on Windows 8 because it is the default account type used when you initially setup users after an install – and most end users will simply click Next not knowing what they are doing. So get used to it…..
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