NEED HELP - Vista user password locked, HDD password frozen, supervisor password clear but no user login

We have a Vista home premium password lockout problem with my daughter's new Dell Studio 1537. Her password worked then didn't or she typed it incorrectly 3 or enough times to be locked out never to be let in again. We have no password recovery disk and did not forget the password. I'm not sure how she set up user accounts but on login screen there's only one user showing  - hers and since that's locked out it must be the user password that's the problem.

From F2 utilities I see:

supervisor password is clear and I apparantely can access the field to enter a password

user password locked

HDD password frozen

in utilities can I set a supervisor password and login in as admin if that's same as admin? In help it says supervisor password controls access to set up utility and when HDD password exists the supervisor password can not be set. So if I'm able to access the field to set supervisor password does that make sense if HDD password is frozen?

If she didn't set up an admin account - can I do this from safe mode? or is there anyway to get into the laptop and reset the user password?

Also tried Ophcrack Live CD and IF it booted from CD the program did not come up, instead it caused a boot failure and laptop went into startup repair immediately. It doesn't appear to work with VIsta home premium as it claims or I am doing something wrong. 

I need to know what are my options are to get around this BESIDES reinstalling Vista?

thanks for any help offered besides calling Dell - they want $60/hour and Microsoft refers me back to Dell since it was pre-installed on laptop. I guess the ONE thing they didn't sell me was software support and that wasn't realized until now.

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