Make the most of the Windows 10 Upgrade

The Windows 10 free upgrade stops being free on Friday 29th July. Which means that, what with my flair for forward planning, I've been digging out old machines and upgrading them this week because it would be daft not to. One of the machines that I found was my Packard Bell twisty tablet of a few years ago; Still works fine, but I'd forgotten the password to log in. The machine was keyed to my Microsoft account and I've changed my password several times since I last used it. And I can't for the life of me remember the old ones.

Idiot me (although actually a knack for forgetting old passwords is a useful thing to acquire as it stops you using the old one by mistake). Anyhoo, I found a YouTube video that showed a nifty way to break back into a Windows 8 system. The video was a good start, but I had a few issues. For a start, when you run the command prompt via your USB booted copy of Windows 8 the system drive you have to tamper with might not be drive C: (in my case it was drive e:).

Another problem is that the hack doesn't seem to let you fix the passwords of accounts linked to Microsoft. But you can create new local accounts, including ones with administrator privileges, which gets you going. The wise amongst you are probably saying "Why didn't you just attach the machine to a network and let the passwords catch up?". Well, two answers. Firstly I think the mechanism has changed since my machine last ran. And secondly the clock was placing the machine somewhere in 2013, which meant that all the secure sockets stuff was broken. And of course to put the clock right I had to log in.....

The machine is presently at 92% of the upgrade process. If you've got machines that you want to keep useful I'd advise having a quick check around the house to see if you can get them going and update them. I'm probably going to pass my machines on once upgraded, but they'll be a lot more useful if they are running Windows 10.