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I have a Mac mini version 3 I believe (not really that important but I suspect people will ask) on which Windows 7 has been installed. I haven't used the computer for about a year and forgot the password (I've exhausted my guessing list). No matter what I do I can't reset the password.

After guessing I tried to upgrade to Windows 10 since I could do a system re-install, which actually would be nice, but that failed. The USB key is not recognized as a bootable option (using alt on the keyboard). I then tried to do a CD image but that also fails and is stuck on the "Select CD-ROM Boot Type" screen that many people have encountered. I've even tried the only solution that has been reported to work but it didn't work for me...

So not only can I not do a system re-install I also can't run the command line repair to reset the password for a user, etc.

I'm basically at a loss on how to proceed? Even if I swapped HD, which I don't want to do, I would probably still be stuck at that screen.

Keep in mind bootcamp is NOT installed on the Mac mini, I guess at some point I did a full re-install of the OS...

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  • How about cmd+R during the boot and restore the MacOS first - after that you can install bootcamp and Windows 10...?
    – TomEus
    Commented Nov 29, 2017 at 7:26
  • Unfortunately Apple no longer supports that Mac Mini :(
    – Steph
    Commented Nov 30, 2017 at 5:18

2 Answers 2

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Mac mini comes with UEFI firmware and make sure you use Windows 10 64-bit install disc. If you use a USB key, you can use Rufus to create a bootable Windows installation drive with GPT partition scheme.

Once booting from Windows 10 install disc, you can either take use of the utilman trick to reset your password, or do a clean reinstallation.

If you're just looking for a free password reset utility, I would recommend using Hiren's BootCD, or booting with Ubuntu Live CD and then loading chntpw to clear your password.

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The solution is that I needed to find a Windows 32 install disc, specifically a Windows 7 32-bit install disk.

At this point I could probably re-install Windows 7 but fortunately I found a better solution. You basically use the Windows 7 CD repair functionality to replace Utilmon.exe with cmd.exe. This in turn replaces the Ease of Access functionality in the Windows login screen with cmd. From there you can then use the net user command to reset the password of any Windows user account.

You can read the full instructions on how to reset a Windows login using this technique here.

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