Tab 8 W1-810 needs hard reset

axeman3d · November 2015

An elderly friends wife died not long ago and she had an Iconia Tab 8 W1-810 that she used. He was looking to sell it or pass it on to someone so he asked me to help as its locked with his wife's account.

I cant reset her Live password, no one knows the details to be able to answer the security questions she set up. I thought it would be a simple matter of certain key presses to bypass or wipe the machine, but the best I can get to is the setup utility by holding the volume and start buttons for a certain time. Even that is hit or miss. Holding shift while pressing restart does absolutely nothing. Unlike the Android version there's no 'wipe' selection to do a factory reset on it, and because its locked with her password I can't simply go into any settings on the tablet and wipe the account.

How do I do a factory reset on this tablet? Is it possible to get past that account password somehow? Any ideas greatly appreciated.

philetus · November 2015

If you can access the email account she used, you can reset the password.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-live/account-reset-password-forgot-faq

Hard reset, try this

https://acer.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/30957/~/factory-data-reset-on-the-iconia-a1-810-tablet

axeman3d · November 2015

As I stated in the original post, we CANT reset her password without knowing the answers to her security questions, what 5 emails she sent last, etc, etc. Her husband is computer illiterate and doesn't know what the answers are. There's pages of questions to reset it and we simply dont know most of the answers.

Again as I said originally the available reset instructions only apply to the Android versions and don't work for the Windows version of the tablet. The volume/power button trick gets you to setup utility 5.0 which doesn't have anything like a reset function.

So the question remains, does anyone know how to reset the Iconia tab 8 WINDOWS VERSION?

billsey · November 2015

Windows is going to want a password for any of the reset/refresh options. Likely your only recourse is to install from scratch.

axeman3d · November 2015

It looks like it. I contacted Microsoft about resetting the account password and even if we supply a death certificate, power of attorney, etc the most they will do is delete the account.

The next problem is going to be how to reinstall Windows 8.1 on a tablet you have no access to. I can't find anything obvious online so I've emailed the question to Acer.

As much as I hate Android I'm beginning to wish she'd bought the Android version. Just tweak the volume and power button and you're ok, but with Windows it looks like we have an expensive paper weight if you forget your password.

philetus · November 2015

I don't know if this will work for a MS account PW, but it's worth a try.

Last resort, Boot from Install disk and use diskpart to clean HDD or put another HDD in it and install Windows.

axeman3d · November 2015

I would quite happily reinstall the operating system, but how do I do that with a tablet? It doesn't come with a recovery disk or software of any kind to do that. If there's a recovery partition on the tablets drive I have been unable to find the button combination to access it. I also haven't been able to find any software download on the Acer site for doing this kind of thing. How do you do a reinstall on a tablet with no access to the O/S?