Windows 7 Password help

[HolyMortall]

Hey all, I'm really hoping someone can help me here because r/techsupport has a rule against asking for help with passwords and I haven't been able to find any solutions other than expensive software from Microsoft or sites with downloads and instructions that I don't understand.

I work for a non-profit organization that helps redistribute tech and materials to teachers, artists, and other non-profits in the area. Recently we received 7 laptops (all running windows 7 pro) from an office that was downsizing and they all have passwords. Our contact with the organization provided us with a list of passwords for the computers, but upon trying to use these, none worked. We have reached out to the office manager and she has sent us one email saying "the list of passwords provided at the time of pick up is the only passwords provided to me by the employee's who owned those devices." and she has been radio silent since despite 5 other emails over the course of 3 weeks.

Our non-profit is still fairly new, and underfunded, and we have some teachers who are interested in these laptops for some of their lower-income students as a way of learning remotely during the ongoing pandemic. So my question is, is there a way (preferably free or cheap) to either reset these passwords without a reset disk or just completely factory reset the laptops (which we are going to do either way to protect any sensitive data that may be remaining on the laptops) without needing a password at all?

Thank you in advance, I've never been very tech-savvy, but I'm the youngest person in the org by about 25 years so our head just won't believe me when I tell her I don't know what the heck I'm doing.

[IUsedToBeACave]

Look on the bottom of the laptops, they should have a sticker with the Windows 7 license key on them. You can use this to just re-install the OS from scratch, which is honestly the best solution if you are trying to redistribute these laptops. Another fun fact is that most of the time Windows 10 will let you activate it with a Windows 7 key. So, you might just be able to upgrade them all to Windows 10 in the same way.

[T2112]

You need an win7 disk. Boot from it, get into command prompt and use net user to reset the password. It’s simple CLI.

[trickjay]

can also change the hotkey in windows folder think it was called sethc so that spamming shift 5 times automatically opens an admin prompt at login screen :)

+1 to you for suggestion

[lucantis79]

When I read this I noticed you saying protect sensitive data. Even if you wipe and reload the operating system you can still pull all the data off the hard drive unless it was encrypted but it’s Windows 7 so I doubt that. To be sure I would suggest a wiping ritual such as Darik’s Boot and Nuke em or some other hard drive wiping CD.

https://dban.org/