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Summary: It turns out that resetting an Windows account password is frighteningly easy, as long as you have access to the machine.
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When I set up my machine I did set a password for the Administrator account, and then I promptly forgot it, since I never use that account. Now I need it. What can I do? |
Do you have physical access to the machine?
Good.
You can reset any Windows password on that machine that you like.
And if that doesn't scare you, I really need to drive home a point.
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First let's walk through what you need to do. The screen shots below are from my Windows Vista machine, but Windows XP and NT are also supported.
Obligatory caveat - this utility has been around for a while, and has a good reputation. However, as with any third party software that's going to operate on sensitive system areas, you are always at risk. Make sure you have a good backup of your machine prior to performing these operations. And of course use of utilities of this nature are entirely at your own risk.
First, download and burn to CD the Offline NT Password and Registry Editor. This is actually a highly customized version of Linux, that's designed to do exactly what the name implies: allow you to examine and edit the password information and registry of a Windows machine.
Boot from that CD you just burned. You'll end up with something like this on your screen:
Don't let all the stark plain text worry you, the process for what we're doing is actually pretty simple.
Here's the relevant portion of that screen, enlarged:
You can see that the utility has found multiple disks and/or partitions, and is asking which one I want to work on. In my case I know that the partition listed as the larger 1 (74207MB) is my Windows drive, so I enter 2 to select it and press Enter. Next:
After selecting the disk we want to use, the utility now asks us for the location of the registry. The utility has correctly guessed the location, Windows/system32/config, so all I need to is press Enter to move on.
Next it asks more specifically what it is we want to operate on:
In this case the default answer Password reset, which indicates which portions of the system are to be worked on, is the correct one so all I need to do is press Enter.
Now it asks what we want to do:
We're here specifically to operate on passwords, so once again the default answer of 1 is correct, and I simply press Enter.
Now things get interesting.
You can see here that the utility has listed all the user accounts on my machine: Administrator, Guest, and the account I actually login with, "LeoN".
It's asking which user account to operate on, and supplied "Administrator" as the default, so once again I press Enter, and we get to the reason we're here:
Now, obviously there are several choices here. My preference is to clear the password so that no password would be required to login, and of course make sure that the account is enabled. Once done, you can then login to the account in Windows and select a new password.
Use the "Quit" options and further prompts to save data to disk, exit the utility and reboot back into Windows.
Now, naturally, this has only been an overview of one type of operation. I recommend you familiarize yourself with the utility prior to using it, and review the documentation and FAQ on the web site.
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So that was pretty simple, right? OK, maybe a little scary if you've never done something like that before, but you can see that it's pretty darned easy.
Reboot from CD, press enter (in most cases) a few times, and *poof* ... the administrator account password is reset and you have access once again.
So easy anyone could do it.
Anyone.
This is where you should be concerned.
Anyone with physical access to your machine can do what I've just described.
If you're in a position where folks with a motive or other random strangers can access your machine, you may want to rethink your physical security.
If it's not physically secure, it's not secure.
The ability to walk up with a CD, and "own" the machine with a reboot and a few keystrokes hopefully makes that pretty clear.
Related:
Article C3379 - May 12, 2008
I went and bought a $650.00 and locked myself out a month after I had. That was last year, so instead of buying a new start up disk or going to eBay Im going to try this.
Posted by: Barry Eason at January 1, 2009 12:55 AM************Barry***********
I have an emachine and this doesn't seem to work. Does anyone know of something that will work on the emachine? TKS in advance. BTW, the computer I was trying to download cd from had trojans and when I got rid of them then I could download.
Posted by: Granny Brenda at January 14, 2009 4:36 PMI download the program, ut it is asking me for a license key before I can get into my passwords. How can I get this key? What key would it want?
Posted by: Rebecca at January 29, 2009 7:37 AMMany thanks for this great tool. I used it to successfully reset the Administrator password on my old laptop (Windows XP) that I hadn't used for sometime. However, I subsequently became "daring" and chose to disable syskey. The result is that no user (including the administrator) can now log on to the computer. Is there anyway I can re-enable syskey or any other way of logging to the computer? Passwords for all users are currently shown to be blank and I cannot change them. Many thanks for your assistance.
Posted by: Ted at February 9, 2009 12:45 PMForgot Your Windows Password?
A lot of people think that after having lost their Windows admin password, they absolutely have to reinstall their
OS. Let me tell you something: They are wrong! Here I'm posting a few methods / utilities which can be used to
recover Windows password:
1st Method:
The first thing which you check if you forget login password. When we install Windows, it automatically creates an
account "Administrator" and sets its password to blank. So if you have forget your user account password then try
this:
Start system and when you see Windows Welcome screen / Login screen, press ++ keys twice and it'll
show Classic Login box. Now type "Administrator" (without quotes) in Username and leave Password field blank. Now
press Enter and you should be able to log in Windows.
Now you can reset your account password from "Control Panel -> User Accounts".
Same thing can be done using Safe Mode. In Safe Mode Windows will show this in-built Administrator account in Login
screen.
2th Method:
There are many 3rd party utilities which claim to recover forgotten Windows password:
Windows Password Recovery Tool Service: windowspasswordsrecovery.com
WWindows Password Recovery Tool is a program that works instantly to remove any lost or forgotten password. Simply
boot your PC from the supplied Boot CD, and get access to forgotten Windows and administrator passwords in just
seconds. Their method is so much faster/easier, and works great!
Posted by: windows at March 14, 2009 12:10 AMhttp://www.windowspasswordsrecovery.com
Will removing the battery from the motherboard lose all previously set password?
08-Apr-2009
Long time ago , I confronted with the password problem. Finally , my friend Jane introduce the Windows password Reset.It help me access windows. It's worth a try!
Posted by: dency at April 24, 2009 3:14 AMhttp://www.resetwindowspassword.com
※.Login to a computer that can link to Internet. Download Windows Password Unlocker 4.0 and decompress it on that PC. Note that: there is a .ISO file. Burn the .ISO file to a CD.
Posted by: fiona at May 6, 2009 1:02 AM※. Get out the newly created CD and insert it to the locked computer.
※. re-booted the locked computer and then followed the process of instructions. Just a few steps, the old password was removed.'''
※. Setting new password:
Step one: Open the "Control Panel"
Step two: Click the "User Account "
Step three: Select the account you wanna to set a new password.
Step four: Click "changing Account " and "set up password", then fill out the form as listed. Click "Create Password".
Thus, you have a personal login ID and Password, any one has no right to login to your computer with out this info.
1. Login to a computer that can link to Internet. Download Windows Password Unlocker 4.0 at http://www.passwordunlocker.com and decompress it on that PC. Note that: there is a .ISO file. Burn the .ISO file to a CD.
2 Get out the newly created CD and insert it to the locked computer.
3 re-booted the locked computer and then followed the process of instructions. Just a few steps, the old password was removed.'''
4 Setting new password:
Step one: Open the "Control Panel"
Step two: Click the "User Account "
Step three: Select the account you wanna to set a new password.
Step four: Click "changing Account " and "set up password", then fill out the form as listed. Click "Create Password".
13-May-2009
Pardon the pun (if you did not get it, "poor Englich." I think it's funny.)
Anyway, I successfully downloaded the files from the link provided. Servers sometimes go down, as you know, so don't panic if you get a 404.
NOTE: There are instructions on how to make a boot CD, boot floppy, AND a boot USB (e.g., thumb drive). Those instructions are in a TXT file in the download.
Here is a link to the only page you need on how to reset the password, assuming you have made the boot CD, floppy or USB.
http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/
While the procedure looks daunting because of the code he shows you on the page, read his bold printed messages that tell you not to worry about what you are seeing. And Leo mentions this and his instructions are most helpful in handholding you through this.
You can see that eventually the program gets to a menu choice "Password reset" as is mentioned by Leo. That should cause you to relax a little.
Bonus Tip: If you are able, print out the directions (Leo's and the other pages linked) so you can refer to them. If you have access to a different computer and can read from there while you are performing the PW reset, that would be ideal.
Posted by: Michael M at June 4, 2009 12:36 PM