Windows 8 Key?

"Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing." (granfury)
01/14/2017 at 15:17 • Filed to: None

I was given a free Toshiba C855 that appears to work OK with the exception of the cracked display. Eventually I’ll order a new LCD panel but I need to learn a bit more about this machine and how to bring it back to a usable state.

The machine seems to boot up OK to the login screen as long as I have an external monitor plugged in. I’ll probably just reinstall Windows rather than asking the previous owner to provide me with her granddaughter’s password. I don’t see a Windows CoA sticker on the machine, even under the battery. From what I’ve read it’s actually in the BIOS, something I can’t seem to access with the trashed display.

Without knowing the password, is there any way for me to log into this machine and give myself admin rights? I figure that, for the time being, I’ll just use it as a desktop. Will I ever be able to access the BIOS without having a working LCD display?

DISCUSSION (12)

Echo51 > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
01/14/2017 at 15:22

Some say closing the lid right after pressing the power button will force BIOS on the external screen for some laptops, worth a try. I’d just reinstall, the key is probably not visible in BIOS anyway and is one that windows will fetch itself upon reinstall, but possibly only for the OEM version.

AndyG_UK > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
01/14/2017 at 15:27

As long as reinstall Windows with the same version it came with\is licensed for it should just pick up the key. I had to reinstall my Dell Venue Pro 11 a few days ago as the m.2 ssd in it died, just used a standard Win 10 pro 64bit (which is what it came with) build (downloaded from Microsoft), it never asked for the key and shows as activated.

404 - User No Longer Available > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
01/14/2017 at 15:35

You can use this way to get admin access to the machine. Works OK unless drive is encrypted with Bitlocker.

http://www.howtogeek.com/96630/how-to-reset-your-forgotten-windows-password-the-easy-way/

As for accessing BIOS... you have a spare external monitor? Hook it up to the VGA/DisplayPort/HDMI.

Junkrat aka Rick Sanchez: Fury Road Edition > AndyG_UK
01/14/2017 at 15:41

You sure you didn’t download that image from micorsoft.com? I actually love that feature of some new computers, it’s genius if you ask me.

Junkrat aka Rick Sanchez: Fury Road Edition > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
01/14/2017 at 15:44

I’ll just leave this here.

http://pogostick.net/~pnh/ntpasswd/

https://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd

Junkrat aka Rick Sanchez: Fury Road Edition > Junkrat aka Rick Sanchez: Fury Road Edition
01/14/2017 at 15:50

Addendum about the BIOS. Find out what button you need to be pressing. Boot up press that button for about 5 sec and then close the lid. See if you can find a youtube video of a similar laptop booting so you can get timing down. Hopefully it will have booted into the BIOS and by closing the lid it will change over to the external monitor. I’ve never had a Toshiba laptop, but Dell’s have a function key that toggles the external monitor.

facw > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
01/14/2017 at 15:51

I doubt it would be in the BIOS. It’s presumably an OEM key anyway.

A couple things you can try. One there is a trick that can be used to reset the passwords for local accounts https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-reset-a-windows-8-password-2626230

Two, you can reset windows, which is essentially a reinstall: https://www.lifewire.com/reset-this-pc-2626216

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
01/14/2017 at 17:45

Many thanks to all of you for your assistance with this system. I tried the lid close trick and was able to access the BIOS. Nothing there of any note, but I did change to boot from the ODD. I created a Windows 8.1 boot disc and did some tweaks necessary to reset and activate the Administrator account. I’m still trying to figure out how to change the password for an existing user, but this seems to be a minor issue at this point. I did create another user account with admin privileges, but I believe that the battery finally died when I tried to log into that account and so I had to stop playing around with this PoS. 2.2 GHz I3? Nah - i5 swap coming up.

I’m about to head out for dinner and will resume working on this thing when I get back. I believe that all of the hard work is done, and now it’s just minor tweaking and password resets, if possible, to the existing user account. Windows 8 is seriously weird and unpleasant to use, at least for someone comfortable with 7/10/XP/Vista/OS X/Linux, and I can see why it didn’t exactly take the world by storm. It might be OK on a tablet or phone, but a notebook is not a tablet or phone...

NojustNo > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
01/15/2017 at 02:12

Computer tech here: the difference between an i5 and I3 isn’t really worth tearing it down to swap it. it’s not really noticeable unless you can find a quad core i5 AND use apps that can take advantage.

You can also still upgrade to Windows 10 for free if you get the Windows 10 accessibility version. it’s not really a different version you just have to declare that you need it.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/accessibility/windows10upgrade

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > NojustNo
01/15/2017 at 12:39

Well, I’m going to be tearing the machine down anyway to replace the display, so I might as well do any other difficult upgrades whilst I’ve got the machine apart. It currently sports a rather wimpy 2328M now, and with the lesser cache, slower graphics and no turbo, even a basic i5 will be an upgrade. If this computer was for my mother to check email I wouldn’t bother, but I’ll be using it for flight training in my CAP squadron, and FSX is quite demanding when it comes to CPU power. I think spending $35-50 for a better CPU will be worth the investment. An i7 would probably be overkill for what is essentially an entry level machine, but the i5 should hit the sweet spot when is comes to price vs. performance.

NojustNo > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
01/17/2017 at 13:53

Sounds good, I had an I5 laptop of the same generation and it was great. Just replaced it for a model with a dedicated video card.

Good luck with the project! Just so you know you don’t need to tear down the whole laptop to dothe LCD, just get the bezel off around the screen to expose the raw lcd.

then you can search for the model of the LCD and find the same or equivalent.

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > NojustNo
01/17/2017 at 16:32

After doing a bit more research it seems that toshiba has something in the bios that shuts down the computer after 30 minutes if it doesn’t have the original CPU. Screw that and screw toshiba for doing that. I’ll just keep using the beat-to-hell Acer I rescued since it didn’t have a problem with a new CPU and put the Toshiba up for sale or give it away. I wanted a cheap i5 with HDMI but it doesn’t look like it’ll be the Toshiba after all. (Cheap bastards...)