9/7/14

Forgot your Windows Password

Here are some great tips for users who forgot their Windows passwords. It's not an easy task to do, but with proper patience and time. You can restore your Windows to original state.

Please note that this information is intended for educational purpose and not for mischief. Besides all this information is online for anyone to access for free.



Step 1:
 Use the Windows repair utility to reset your password. You'll will need your recovery disks. First boot from recovery disks. Then click repair your computer and choose command prompt. The c drive is not usually mounted and to mount it you need to find the current drive letter. In DOS type "bcdedit I find "osdevice" the command should end in partion= with a drive letter. This letter should be used instead of c. Then do the following type  (drive letter is in place of c)

 "copy c:\windows\system32\sethc.exe c:\ "
then type this below
"copy c:\windows\system32\cmd.exe c:\windows\system32\sethc.exe"
when prompted type
"yes"

Step 2
 Change the password using the command prompt. Remove the installation disks as in step 1 and reboot the computer. On the login screen press Shift key five times in a row. By magic the command prompt appears. Now enter in the command prompt the following "net user " the name should be the account you want to change the password to. 
You must then restore access to the sethc.exe file we overwrote in Step 1. To do that click Start-Accessories, right click cmd prompt and choose Run as Administrator. This gives you the right to copy sethc.exe back into the system32 folder. Now enter the following command " copy c:\sethc.exe c:\windows\system32\sethc.exe" and then confirm to finish. 

Step 3 
 If all fails it's time to get the heavy duty password cracker from Ophcrack. Download it at http://ophcrack.sourceforge.net and burn the software to a disk and boot your computer to the software to crack the password. Your best bet is to do a deep scan to crack the password. With any luck your computer password should be that simple to crack.