How do I get into my new to me hand-me-down laptop?

Without the password, only windows re-install will work.

We get lots of requests for lost passwords, basically you are asking us to tell you how to hack in to a protected computer. The computer could be stolen for all we know.
Take the computer with proof of ownership to a workshop and they should be able to recover the password, or alternatively reinstall the operating system from your recovery disks.
If we posted any method of bypassing/resetting a password over the internet on a public forum, any thief or hacker would think Christmas came early

Ferrari

Call Microsnot and see if the Windows product key was registered by the former user. That might help, or not.
Answers should not help on laptop system lost password access since we don't know you nor can we verify your story. There would be legal and personal security issues.

You don't. It's a paperweight until you get the password.

If it's a Lenovo you should be able to do the factory reset. Wipes the whole computer to it's original software settings.

If you have a Lenovo you have to push the blue Lenovo button to get into the recovery manager if you can't get into the Lenovo recovery manager because it's damaged for some reason the only choice you have is totally Wipe Out the operating system that's on there and reinstall it but take heart the older Lenovo computers don't require a lot of drivers most of them work after you install the fresh copy of Windows and I'm sure you can use the product key that's underneath the battery

I use this Trinity Rescue Kit, a linux based tool that does many things besides windows password removal. You have to be able to burn a disk or make a USB key bootable to use.

You need to re-install it from scratch using the Recovery partition. Tap F11 at system start

Find the password hint, maybe it will help him remember it