Surface Pro 3 boot to USB local password reset

[occsean]

Need to boot to a USB password reset drive and for the life of me cannot get this darn thing to boot from either a USB flash drive or USB DVD. I have entered the UEFI, turned off secure boot, set boot to USB-SSD, and tried the hold down volume down button, tap power button, and wait for logo and let go of volume down button.

Anyone ever had any success resetting the password on these guys using external tools? FWIW I am attempting to use Offline Password Cracker off the pogostick site which I have used for years.

Thanks

 

[ComputerRepairTech]

Did you make sure its a UEFI bootable image?

 

[NviGate Systems]

I believe it's Volume Up/Down then power. That forces it to boot from external media. But media must be efi.

 

[occsean]

I used ISO2Disc to create the USB stick and insured that GPT/UEFI was selected. But I am certainly not opposed to trying it again and burning another copy to USB. This thing is driving me batty...

 

[NviGate Systems]

Those boot disks don't support UEFI. You need to use PC Unlocker or another PE variant. I just checked the site. @ 18MB there is no way it supports UEFI, and the Surface Pro can't do CSM.

https://4sysops.com/archives/free-ntpwedit-reset-windows-password/

This utility is GPL and if you have a Windows PE that is WOW64 aware, you can use it to reset the local passwords.

I have not tried, but you could copy the SAM file from the Windows install via recovery console to a USB flash and then run that app on another PC then copy SAM back. That *might* work, never tried it.

 

[occsean]

Those boot disks don't support UEFI. You need to use PC Unlocker or another PE variant. I just checked the site. @ 18MB there is no way it supports UEFI, and the Surface Pro can't do CSM.

https://4sysops.com/archives/free-ntpwedit-reset-windows-password/

This utility is GPL and if you have a Windows PE that is WOW64 aware, you can use it to reset the local passwords.

I have not tried, but you could copy the SAM file from the Windows install via recovery console to a USB flash and then run that app on another PC then copy SAM back. That *might* work, never tried it.

Thanks for the headsup. I had actually used an old copy of PC-Unlocker that I had, still didn't work. In any event, the user after what seemed like a million texts to me remembered the password. LOL. Problem solved.