Forgot your Windows Password? Quickly Reset the Windows Administrator Password and Get In!
If you've forgotten your Windows login password, or simply need access to the Windows administrator account but don't know its password, it's actually very easy to gain access, provided that you can reboot the machine and boot from a CD or USB stick.
The Offline NT Password & Registry Editor is a free, downloadable, bootable CD that will allow you to among other things reset the password for the Windows Administrator account. (Note that because Windows stores passwords encrypted, it cannot recover the Windows Administrator password, only clear it, or set a new one.)
Begin by downloading the Offline NT Password & Registry Editor ISO and burn it to a CD. (Instructions are included for making a bootable USB device as well.)
Now, boot from that CD.
You can press Enter, or simply wait 30 seconds and the program will move past its boot options screen to the initial operation screen:
Select the partition that contains the Windows installation who's password you want to reset. In this example it's the second, larger partition.
You're then asked to specify the location of the system registry files. In most cases the default answer - Windows\System32\Config - is correct.
Next you're asked to indicate what part of the registry you want to work on. For a Password reset, the default answer of "1" is appropriate:
The next question really boils down to "what do you want to do?". To reset passwords, the default choice of 1 is the correct one.
Next you choose the account to operate on. The default answer is "Administrator", but you can of course change the password of any account. Typically it's safest to change the administrator password (you can reboot and then make other changes from within Windows as administrator).
You can clear the password - so that no password is required to login (often the safest - once again you can then set a new password after you've logged in) - or you can set a new password here.
In this example, we'll choose "Clear", and since the account is also disabled, we'll also unlock and enable.
Since you're done, type "!" Enter to exit the Account Selection menu:
You'll be asked what to do again, this time respond with "q" and Enter to quit:
Confirm that you do indeed want the program to write the changes we've made to your hard disk by typing "y" and Enter.
You're done! Type "n" followed by Enter to complete the process.
Finally, remove the CD or USB boot device, and reboot the machine. You should now have access to the administrator account (or see whatever other changes you elected to make).