application to reset admin account?

I was attempting to assist an old lady, setting herself as the Administrator. As we went over the creation of her account 7 times, she still managed to either forget her password, or typed it in wrong. Since there was no other account to log in to, we are now up a creek without a paddle. I've tried several variations of what she claims is her password, but so far no luck.

I wanted to access the bios, but that is password-protected as well. She thinks one of her grandkids may have done this, but they are not available to ask.

Am I totally screwed? This Aspire One is the 8.9 inch sapphire blue, that came with XP SP3. No one knows where the CD is, so now I must either figure out the password, or try to re-install XP. I have an early OEM disc with XP SP2, but I don't know if the COA on the bottom of this machine will activate that.

Once a long time ago, I used a password reset utility on a rarely used laptop, but I think it required being able to get into the bios. Is there any utility to do that in XP? Thank you.

 

I came close to this problem not long ago, but had a reminder note. Google turns this up at the top with several suggestions:

http://www.petri.co.il/forgot_administr ... ssword.htm

and this looks promising - need external drive, may cost something if you get a working result (?)

http://www.loginrecovery.com

I'd be interested to know what works.

 

I've used a Linux based utility called ECBD in the past to reset the Windows password, it used to be free but I see that it isn't anymore. I can testify that it works well.

If I'm reading it correctly though, you've got a bigger problem than that if the bios is password protected. I don't know about the Aspire One, in some other makes and models pulling a jumper off the motherboard will reset the bios back to default.