password forgot vista HP

hello,
my friend has just got a new laptop with windows vista home premium.
he has forgot his password and now cant login.
before you say anything i have instucted him to go in to safe mode and login in the the other admin account and reset his password that way.
but as ive just found out from a google search the local admin account in safe mode isnt enabled by default in vista.
so with normal safe mode he cant choose anything but his account which he doesnt know the password to.
going to the system recovery options he can choose three accounts.
admin,guest or user.
if he chooses admin with no password and clicks ok it says this account isnt enabled.
does anyone know of anyother way of enabling the local admin account in safe mode in vista?
i mean cmon its microsoft surely there must be another backdoor to enable that admin account in safemode so he can reset his password.
thanks in advance
lodore

Why not try to recover the password? Check out ophcrack at http://ophcrack.sourceforge.net/. I have tested a previous of this cd on my own XP machine simply out of curiosity. I can tell you it works 100%!! Based on a Ubuntu live cd, very quick and minimal interaction required.

I've no experience with Vista, however it is supported according the website.

Agreed that Ophcrack is a great tool but fairly sure you'd need the bought version for Vista as it stores the password as an NT Hash. Even then their tables are only good for 7 or 8 characters.

Try this, new version supports Vista http://home.eunet.no/pnordahl/ntpasswd/

you can try to Google Password Genius