A) No
B) Yes and surely Linux also, provided you can get into the BIOS to tell it to boot from the installation medium. But it could very well be they blocked that also. Then ask your aunt to contact the IT support of the university to see what they can do.
My aunt had an old work laptop from the university she works at. Since no one was using it anymore I got it. When I tried removing the computer from the univesity domain and make my own user I created a new work group. So I'm disconnected now, have a user account, but I have no admin rights and can barely do anything with this computer. Anytime I try to do anything which requires admin righs I need to use a smart card (which I don't have). I can't even run programs as a administrator because of that smart card.
I've tried:
1) Removing the smart card opinion (https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-security/how-do-i-remove-the-insert-a-smart-card-option/1f4a70bc-f63c-4aff-a6f6-e20070aaeb19) but I'm not allowed to use gpedit.msc (any way to fix that?)
2) Enabling the hidden admin account (https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/enable-the-hidden-administrator-account-on-windows-vista/) but because of the smard card issues I can't run cmd as admin (any way to bypass this?)
3) safe mode start, but can't login to the admin user since I don't have the password.
If there is no way to solve one of the above, I've been wondering if I should try to do a clean install of Windows. It is currently Windows 7 enterprise, but I was planning on installing the home version of 7 (I want to upgrade to 10 eventually). Is that a good solution if I can't solve my admin problems and which version should I install? I'm also a bit worried if I can do a clean install since:
I can't do a computer backup -- need admin rights.
Can't install programs to backup drives nor use any program to recover program keys -- need admin rights.
I currently have nothing important on the computer so it's okay if everythings deleted, but I'm worried something will go wrong if there are missing drivers.
Summed up: A) can I gain admin rights in some way without re-install or B) is it safe to reinstall, and can I install Windows 7 home edition as it is?

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