EPTThe problem:
My sister-in-law has been logging into her windows 8 laptop using a pin-number for so long that she has forgotten the password. You can guess where this is going.
Recently, someone tried to use her computer and entered the pin incorrectly too many times, which caused the pin-login to be disabled. The option has just disappeared. Since she doesn't know the password, this has essentially locked her out of her own computer.
Is there any way to get the pin login back without wiping the HDD? Or even just get the data onto an external drive?
We've tried:
Waiting, first. It's still not showing up after a week, so I imagine it's not coming back on its own.
We've reset the password on her online windows ID, but this apparently doesn't propagate to the laptop.
Safe mode and boot-to-command-line want the password and not the pin.
Tech support told her to reformat, which she'd really rather not do.
It's at the point I'm starting to look at crackers and password recovery tools (one of these?). That stuff looks pretty shady, so I'd appreciate any input as to whether that's a reasonable option to pursue.
It's worth pointing out that I still use windows 7 myself, precisely because of these kinds of things, so I'm a bit out of my comfort zone from the beginning. Also, immediately after this is sorted, she and I are going to have a good long chat about backups and keeping track of passwords.
