Windows 7 Booting Issue

[helenelliott]

Made a password reset USB with Ophcrack, but the computer can't boot from it. I have set the computer booting from USB but get an error message: no booting device found

[HeyYou]

Do you have your windows 7 installation disk? If you do, boot from that. Select 'repair', NOT install. Go for the command prompt. Figure out what drive your windows installation is on. Just keep changing drives till ya find it. :) Once you know where it is, use the following commands:

 

cd \windows\system32

copy utilman.exe utilman.bak

copy cmd.exe utilman.exe confirm the overwrite.

 

Reboot. When windows gets to the login screen, click the icon for 'accessibility options', that will open a command prompt. :)

 

In that window, type in:

 

net user [your username] 1

 

That will change your password to 1

Log in, and change your password to whatever you like.

 

You will have to reboot to your install media to get the accessibility features back. Same process, once you get to \windows\system32, type in:

 

copy ustilman.bak utilman.exe and confirm the overwrite.

 

Reboot back into windows, and you are all set.

[smschulz]

also probably a good idea to switch to win 10 since win 7, i think, no longer supports updates

[HeyYou]

also probably a good idea to switch to win 10 since win 7, i think, no longer supports updates

I ran windows XP for years after updates stopped. I turned off updates in win 7 when MS was pushing win 10 down everyones throat. I never bothered to turn them back on. I HAD to go to win 10 when I rebuilt my machine. (it died....) Not happy about it, but, hey, what can ya do? :D

[zixi]

I ran windows XP for years after updates stopped. I turned off updates in win 7 when MS was pushing win 10 down everyones throat. I never bothered to turn them back on. I HAD to go to win 10 when I rebuilt my machine. (it died....) Not happy about it, but, hey, what can ya do? :D

 

Sort of ditto but I came to a different conclusion. My Windows 7 machine got ill and I didn't fancy fixing it myself - it returned from base with Windows 10. We got along uneasily for a while but then Windows 10 did a huge update which made it extremely difficult to disable Cortana. Oh Cortana - let me count the ways I despised you!

 

Whatever you do don't move to Windows 10 unless you're sure that's what you want because rolling back is difficult (or it was for me). I found the easiest way was to use Linux to reformat the disk in order to reinstall Windows 7. But then I decided to stick with Linux in any case... I expect even now MS is weeping profusely at the loss of me as a user... :laugh:

[HeyYou]

 

I ran windows XP for years after updates stopped. I turned off updates in win 7 when MS was pushing win 10 down everyones throat. I never bothered to turn them back on. I HAD to go to win 10 when I rebuilt my machine. (it died....) Not happy about it, but, hey, what can ya do? :D

 

Sort of ditto but I came to a different conclusion. My Windows 7 machine got ill and I didn't fancy fixing it myself - it returned from base with Windows 10. We got along uneasily for a while but then Windows 10 did a huge update which made it extremely difficult to disable Cortana. Oh Cortana - let me count the ways I despised you!

 

Whatever you do don't move to Windows 10 unless you're sure that's what you want because rolling back is difficult (or it was for me). I found the easiest way was to use Linux to reformat the disk in order to reinstall Windows 7. But then I decided to stick with Linux in any case... I expect even now MS is weeping profusely at the loss of me as a user... :laugh:

 

For win 10, it's all about initial setup. Cortana doesn't bother me at all. I simply declined her services when I installed win 10. Most of the annoying features can be turned off, including notifications. :) I don't know if you can change your mind once windows is installed though..... (so far as Cortana is concerned.... I would think you can.... but, it hasn't been a concern for me, so, I haven't checked into it.)

 

If I could have went with 7, instead of 10, I would have, but, on recent hardware (last few years,,,,, for intel, anything 7th gen or later) there simply aren't any drivers for win 7. According to theory, there are some folks working on them, but, so far, I haven't seen anything that works as well as I would like, and I am simply too lazy to try and convince some flavor of 'ix' to run my games. :D

[zixi]

I have never installed Windows 10 so I didn't know you can tell Cortana to get lost! I did the switching stuff off and hacking registry thing so my 10 looked pretty much like 7. But when the update to 10 came it was difficult to get rid of Cortana. I couldn't replace 10 with 7 because 10 wouldn't let me roll back and I couldn't wipe the hard drive with 10 because Windows wouldn't let me do that either. At that point I decided that as Bill Gates doesn't give me any money towards my PCs then he wasn't telling me what I could and couldn't do... I'm 100% MS-free. :laugh:

 

But to return to the sheep - I agree with you it's possible to stick with 7. Not everyone is enamoured with 10. :devil:

[shumkar]

https://www.howtogeek.com/273824/windows-10-without-the-cruft-windows-10-ltsb-explained/

[Striker879]

Good info Shumkar ... if only I was an "Enterprise".

 

Hey dropped a little morsel in another thread a while back concerning tomorrow being "the day" the Win7 lights get switched off. Guess what I've been doing yesterday and so far today ... short version is me and the Microsoft Update Catalog (as well as Windows Update) are very familiar with one another. As in I'm having dreams about it (or are they nightmares ... is there a difference?).

 

I have my current Win7 box as updated as Win7 will ever be updated, and am currently making my way down my installed updates and determining which I need my own copy of (I still have a virgin copy of Win7 Pro ready for my next build ... I won't face Hey's problem as motherboard and CPU have been collecting dust for quite a while). I ended the day yesterday scouring Canada Computers site for memory, video card etc, especially the memory, DDR3 RAM won't be available forever.

 

So I guess this is "thank you Hey", though there are times it hasn't quite come out that way. Mucking through MS stuff is just SO much fun.

[shumkar]

...if only I was an "Enterprise".

 

...me and the Microsoft Update Catalog (as well as Windows Update)

 

...scouring Canada Computers site for memory, video card etc, especially the memory, DDR3 RAM won't be available forever

 

There is one more option... Switch to Linux :smile:

 

Edit: Really, it's more than one option... There are so many different distros... Plenty to choose from. https://distrowatch.com/ And the (relatively) recent Steam's support made Linux much more gamer-friendly than it was before.

Edited January 13, 2020 by shumkar