May 15, 2017 - Here are five of the most approachable ways for resetting or recovering your. By Julio Franco on May 15, 2017. Boot into Safe Mode with Command Prompt (reboot your PC and tap F8 as it's starting up but. It's included with popular boot disks and Linux distros such as Hiren's Boot CD, Kali Linux.
If you have dabbled with your hard disk and is always doing formatting and partitioning, you will surely come across the term “MBR” and “GPT”. This is especially evident when you are dual-booting your Mac and faced with the problem of having to switch from GPT to MBR. You probably are wondering, what are the differences between MBR and GPT and is there any benefit using one over the other?
We wil clear your doubt in this article. Hard Disk Partitions You probably know that you can split your hard disk into several partitions. The question is, how does the OS know the partition structure of the hard disk?
That information has to come from some where. This is where MBR (Master Boot Record) and GPT (Guid Partition Table) come into play. While both are architecturally different, both play the same role in governing and provide information for the partitions in the hard disk. Master Boot Record (MBR) MBR is the old standard for managing the partition in the hard disk, and it is still being used extensively by many people. The MBR resides at the very beginning of the hard disk and it holds the information on how the logical partitions are organized in the storage device. In addition, the MBR also contains executable code that can scan the partitions for the active OS and load up the boot up code/procedure for the OS. For a MBR disk, you can only have four primary partitions.
To create more partitions, you can set the fourth partition as the extended partition and you will be able to create more sub-partitions (or logical drives) within it. As MBR uses 32-bit to record the partition, each partition can only go up to a maximum of 2TB in size. This is how a typical MBR disk layout looks like: There are several pitfalls with MBR. First of all, you can only have 4 partitions in the hard disk and each partition is limited to only 2TB in size. This is not going to work well with hard disk of big storage space, say 100TB. Secondly, the MBR is the only place that holds the partition information.
If it ever get corrupted (and yes, it can get corrupted very easily), the entire hard disk is unreadable. GUID Partition Table (GPT) GPT is the latest standard for laying out the partitions of a hard disk.
It makes use of globally unique identifiers (GUID) to define the partition and it is part of the UEFI standard. This means that on a UEFI-based system (which is required for Windows 8 Secure Boot feature), it is a must to use GPT. With GPT, you can create theoretically unlimited partitions on the hard disk, even though it is generally restricted to 128 partitions by most OSes. Unlike MBR that limits each partition to only 2TB in size, each partition in GPT can hold up to 2^64 blocks in length (as it is using 64-bit), which is equivalent to 9.44ZB for a 512-byte block (1 ZB is 1 billion terabytes).
In Microsoft Windows, that size is limited to 256TB. From the GPT Table Scheme diagram above, you can see that there is a primary GPT at the beginning of the hard disk and a secondary GPT at the end. This is what makes GPT more useful than MBR. GPT stores a backup header and partition table at the end of the disk so it can be recovered if the primary tables are corrupted.
It also carry out CRC32 checksums to detect errors and corruption of the header and partition table. You can also see that there is a protective MBR at the first sector of the hard disk.
Such hybrid setup is to allow a BIOS-based system to boot from a GPT disk using a boot loader stored in the protective MBR’s code area. In addition, it protects the GPT disk from damage by GPT-unaware disk utilties. OS Support Intel Macs are using GPT by default and you won’t be able to install Mac OS X (without tweaks and hacks) on a MBR system. Mac OS X will run on MBR disk though, it is just that you won’t be able to install on it. Most Linux kernels come with support for GPT. Unless you are compiling your own kernel and you didn’t add this feature in, you should have no problem getting your favorite distro to work in GPT disk.
One thing to note, you wil have to use Grub 2 as the bootloader. For Windows, only the 64-bit version of Windows from XP onward support booting from GPT disk. If you are getting a laptop pre-installed with 64-bit Windows 8, most probably it is using GPT. For Windows 7 and earlier version, the default configuration will be MBR instead of GPT. Conclusion In most cases, you will be fine with either MBR or GPT. It is only in situation where you need to install Windows on a Mac, or when you need to have a partition bigger than 2TB, that you need to use GPT, or convert MBR to GPT. Also, for the newer model of computer that uses UEFI, it will only support GPT.
If you have any question, feel free to ask in the comments below and we will be around to answer your question. You people, including the author of this page, use the word HACK carelessly. Tweak or Tweaking, is expressed as to making changes/adjustments as in tuning something to fit your required needs. Hack or Hacking is expressed typically as to entering into a file/system that is encrypted through by means of using various methods or entering into a file/system by means of manipulation/exploitation due to poor integrity of such file/system. In fact, there are many people on the web who use these words interchangeable when they are not the same meaning. I think you will find that there is some debate about the usage of the word ‘hack’, and through common (and sometimes incorrect) usage it has expanded to include a number of uses quite distinct from the earliest uses of the word. The earliest uses, by the way, can be traced (or have been argued) to be mainly two camps – a technically adept computer/technology user (e.g.
Coder), or someone subverting systems as you described above, in the earliest cases phone phreaks. It’s more than acceptable to use it in the sense of someone ‘hacking’ some code together, or ‘hacking’ into a computer system as you describe, either on a white-hat or black-hat basis, or indeed ‘hacking’ something in the sense of tweaks and modifications to either the original intended use or to the core system itself – e.g. Getting MacOS to run on standard Intel PC hardware. So in fact, the usage of the word ‘hack’ in this article is not careless at all.
I am using Mac and my Hard drive is presently has one partitioned to GPT / Mac OS extended (Journaled ) Now that i need my 1TB WD my pass port ultra to be able to read and write form Mac as well as windows OS pc and need a pass word protection which WD has builtin or can be downloaded,i want my HD to be single partition and use only WD Security Lock soft ware for pass word protection, and formate it for both OS useable, plz help me how do i partition my WD 1 tb my pass port ultra for useable to mac and OS at the same time can use to lock my HD using WD security lock regards Hamim.
Coming to the aid of a fellow forum member, around a dozen ways to handle a lost Windows password. We were so impressed with the list that we've decided to editorialize some of it for easier access. We've included five of what seem like the most approachable ways for resetting or recovering your Windows password along with abridged instructions on how to execute them and some alternatives toward the end. Before moving on, if you log into Windows with an online Microsoft account (offered as the default during setup since Windows 8), you can likely just using another device with Internet. #1 Use a command prompt to change your password from the Windows login screen How it works: Swaps the Utility Manager on your Windows login screen for a command prompt, from which you can change the forgotten password. What it works on: Your offline Windows account. Doesn't require extra software though an installation disc might be handy for the first step.
Windows XP users can skip past step 3. To put a command prompt on your login screen you'll need to use a separate command prompt from your Windows installation disc, a recovery drive/partition or by accessing the 'Advanced Startup Options' some other way.
After testing, nothing has been as reliable or easy as simply booting off a Windows disc/USB drive, which you can set up without having a license: -Quick navigation: After booting off the installation media and reaching the first prompt for your language, region etc. You can simply hit Shift + F10 to make a command prompt appear.
Step 1: Swapping the Utility Manager for a command prompt Assuming you've made it to a command prompt, enter the two lines below to create a backup of the Utility Manager and then overwrite it with cmd.exe. Note that '?' Should be your Windows drive letter.
To list all your drives launch DiskPart by typing diskpart and then enter list volume. Move?: windows system32 utilman.exe?: windows system32 utilman.exe.bak copy?: windows system32 cmd.exe?: windows system32 utilman.exe Reboot. Now when you click the Utility Manager on your login screen, it should launch cmd.exe. Step 2: Changing your password At the command prompt on your login screen, enter the following line to set a new password on your account (USERNAME is your account name and PASSWORD is the password you'd like to apply): net user USERNAME PASSWORD Example: net user George bestpassw0rd - also, typing net user alone will list the accounts if you can't remember your username either. Bonus: From the command prompt on your login screen, enter control userpasswords2 for a GUI-based account manager.
That didn't work! You still have options. In the command prompt, enter the text below to enable the default administrator account (requires a reboot): net user administrator /active:yes - /active:no when you're done with the account later After rebooting you should see the Administrator account listed and it shouldn't need a password to log in.
Retry step 2 from a command prompt within this elevated account. #5 iSeePassword How it works: Provides a boot disk with a clean GUI that shows detected Windows users and their passwords along with the ability to reset them. What it works on: Windows XP through 10 including Server editions etc.
With separate tools for passwords on MS Office, iTunes, PDFs and RARs. In the event that you'd like to pay for your mistake, iSeePassword charges $30 for a 'Password Recovery Bundle' that covers more than just Windows and although you'll still have to make a bootable disc/drive to load the software, it will display everything you need in the first window that appears so there isn't any navigation once you're in - perhaps the only perk of going paid.Quick navigation: None! Is that quick enough?
Additional tips and honorable mentions While easier said than done if your password is already lost, the best way to avoid this situation is not losing it in the first place, either by writing it somewhere safe or keeping a digital backup on your phone, on the cloud, or in dedicated software such as. Microsoft's method for resetting an offline Windows password is about as useful as not losing it at all because you have to create the in Windows before locking yourself out and that tool only works on the account/PC used to create it. If the forgotten password was recently applied and you don't mind using Windows Restore, you can wind back to a point before changing it: Tap F8 during bootup before Windows loads to reach advanced boot options repair your computer system restore.
Few if any of these methods will help with a lost pin code or picture password, and although the open source utility ' can extract plaintext passwords, PIN codes and kerberos tickets from memory, it doesn't seem as straightforward to use as the tools above. Hopefully if you're still reading this you've figured out how to get back into your Windows account, but in the event that none of those methods worked for you, here are four more tools worth trying that work differently than those we've already mentioned.