Ran into this problem yesterday, the method you mentioned was the only way to continue.

Get the Windows 8.1 password recovery too video

to help you

I remember this has been discussed in some previous posts here, seems lots of people are having problems with 8.1.

How to improve on Windows 8?

Realistically though if the OP has been using his/her PC for a while that's probably not an option. But once it's back online, loading Windows 7 into a partition on the harddrive and setting up a dual-boot option might be helpful for using the functions Windows 8 is no longer good at, like listing recently opened files. Turns out there's a workaround for that, and for other handy features that vanished from Windows 8, so it's probably not necessary in the long run. (The workaround is to click the "recent" folder under Users/xxxx.)

On the other hand, neither Windows 7 or 8 will run WordPerfect 5.1 (7 runs it in a tiny window, ditto virtual XP, a waste of space imho), so setting up an XP partition and actually getting it to boot would IMHO be worth the effort. Unfortunately, it's also a huge pain in the ass, and so far I haven't been able to get the XP partition I made on the Windows 8 desktop I bought last summer to boot. Oh well.

I picked up an OEM copy of X5 for $15 and no problems.

I've been using it for 20 years and have thousands of WP51 files organized into several hundred directories and subdirectories. Yes, they will open in later versions of WP and Word, and are in fact more easily edited in the updated versions, but nevertheless, it's occasionally helpful to sort through them in their native blue screen DOS format. It's about 100x easier to list and preview in WP51 than in a Windows-explorer directory which won't preview them.

However, I also have a 2009 desktop with a functioning XP partition, so it's not essential to get XP running on the new one, but it would be nice.

p.s. is X5 Windows 95? I have a desktop for that too . . .

I also had Windows versions of Word and WP on there, but nothing beats WP51 for speed and customizability. I finally gave up using WP51 to create docs, but I still have all the old files with 8.3 -character names collected into folders which are a pain to navigate using explorer-type management windows. That's why having XP is nice, as it runs WP5.1 on a full screen. But essential, I suppose not.

I think you meant "Best way"

I've had to recompile the kernel for support for various peripherals. I've had to compile tarballs for applications that weren't part of my distribution's package store. Let's not even get into writing device drivers for non-supported video cards like NVidia.

Not always the best way, depending on your hardware or the software you normally use, like AutoCAD or Solidworks.

my post was to be taken as more of a jab towards windows 8 and m$ in general, not a literal absolute.

I may just be jaded being forced to write c# almost every day.

that led me to give up on Debian, Fedora, Suse, Ubuntu, Slackware, Gentoo and LFS. I'm a hobbyist, not a systems programmer! I tried to get a Atheros wireless card, an NVidia GT 8800 video card, and a Brother printer to work with each of them. I would have been using my time better to bail the Pacific Ocean with a tablespoon.

And don't tell me CUPS would work for my printer. Apparently I wasn't the only one dealing with the crawling horror that is CUPS

http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cups-horror.html

If he can't make sense of CUPS, who can?

Or did Windows Hate claim another victim? Just kidding. If you did I'd be interested in your impressions of it as I'm starting to get notifications.

In your situation, you can reset your signon password with Windows password key. Here are detailed steps:
1. Download Windows Password Key, install and launch it on another available PC. Inset a USB flash drive into it. Click "Burn" to burn a Windows password reset USB.
2. Insert the newly created password reset disk to the locked computer. Set USB drive as the first boot device in BIOS setup. This computer will reboot.
3. Reset the password with Windows password key.
If you have any question please visit http://www.lostwindowspassword.com/article/windows-7-password-reset.html

According to what you said, maybe you typed wrong password, you need to reset Windows 8 password, there are many Windows password recovery tool, you can find them on Google

Last edited Tue Oct 18, 2016, 10:31 PM - Edit history (1)

When you changed the password, make sure the computer is connected to internet or it won't take into effect without network. This works only for Microsoft account. For local user account, UUkeys is the tool you should use to reset windows 8 login password. Once it is done, you can login without password.