Clear a forgotten Windows Password

A friend of mine forgot his password for his Windows 7 computer, and needed to get back into it. I remembered years ago when I was working as a contractor, there was a little Linux utility that would allow you to boot from a floppy and reset windows passwords
Lucky for him, that utility is still around, and it has been updated to work with Windows 7, and Windows 2008.
It is called the “Offline NT Password & Registry Editor”
The website can be found here:
http://pogostick.net/~pnh/ntpasswd/
First, if you are going to use this utility, a word of warning. If a user has EFS encrypted files, and you reset their password, those files will become junk and you will never be able to open them again.
To reset passwords, download the latest zip from the website above, and open it up. There will be an ISO file that you can burn to a CD.
Boot to it, and you will see all kinds of commands scream across the screen. Then you need to answer some questions.
First, it will ask which drive your Windows install is on. You can see the drives and the selection numbers here:

Then it will ask you for the registry location. Just pick the default by pressing enter:

Now that it has all the info it needs, you select your action. We want to reset a password – so we pick the default by pressing enter (Password Reset)

And finally, what we have been looking for – editing the user data. Notice it has a registry editor too. Something that can come in handy with other issues. So pick the first option by pressing enter:

Then pick the user account you want to edit (Usually you can just hit enter here too – since administrator is usually the default)

OK. Here is where you need to stop and pay attention. Every option so far has been the default, and you could select it by hitting enter. If you don’t watch carefully…the final option that you want (clearing the password) is *not* selected by default. Quit is.
I am not the brightest bulb in the bunch, and I ran through it a few times by just hitting enter all the way through…and then tried to get in with no password. Grrr Not working. Until I slowed down and read each step, I realized my mistake.

Pick the clear password option. Option 1. Avoid the temptation to reset the password, and set to a new value. Many times this does not work. Just clear it, login with an empty password, and then you can reset once you are back in windows.
Notice too that you can elevate, and unlock accounts – comes in handy when users forget their password, and lock themselves out.
Can’t tell you how many times this little gem helped me look like a hero back in my contracting days. Glad to see it is still alive and kicking.

Change or Reset Windows Password from a Ubuntu Live CD

If you can’t log in even after trying your twelve passwords, or you’ve inherited a computer complete with password-protected profiles, worry not – you don’t have to do a fresh install of Windows. We’ll show you how to change or reset your Windows password from a Ubuntu Live CD.
This method works for all of the NT-based version of Windows – anything from Windows 2000 and later, basically. And yes, that includes Windows 7.
Note: If you have files on your hard disk encrypted using built-in Windows encryption, they may not be available after changing the Windows password using this method. Exercise caution if you have important encrypted files.
You’ll need a Ubuntu 9.10 Live CD, or a bootable Ubuntu 9.10 Flash Drive. If you don’t have one, or have forgotten how to boot from the flash drive, check out our article on creating a bootable Ubuntu 9.10 flash drive.
The program that lets us manipulate Windows passwords is calledchntpw. The steps to install it are different in 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Ubuntu.

Installation: 32-bit
Open up Synaptic Package Manager by clicking on System at the top of the screen, expanding the Administration section, and clicking on Synaptic Package Manager.

chntpw is found in the universe repository. Repositories are a way for Ubuntu to group software together so that users are able to choose if they want to use only completely open source software maintained by Ubuntu developers, or branch out and use software with different licenses and maintainers.
To enable software from the universe repository, click on Settings > Repositories in the Synaptic window.

Add a checkmark beside the box labeled “Community-maintained Open Source software (universe)” and then click close.

 When you change the repositories you are selecting software from, you have to reload the list of available software. In the main Synaptic window, click on the Reload button.

The software lists will be downloaded.

Once downloaded, Synaptic must rebuild its search index. The label over the text field by the Search button will read “Rebuilding search index.” When it reads “Quick search,” type chntpw in the text field. The package will show up in the list.

Click on the checkbox near the chntpw name. Click on Mark for Installation.

chntpw won’t actually be installed until you apply the changes you’ve made, so click on the Apply button in the Synaptic window now.

You will be prompted to accept the changes. Click Apply.

The changes should be applied quickly. When they’re done, click Close.

chntpw is now installed! You can close Synaptic Package Manager. Skip to the section titled Using chntpw to reset your password.


Installation: 64-bit
The version of chntpw available in Ubuntu’s universe repository will not work properly on a 64-bit machine. Fortunately, a patched version exists in Debian’s Unstable branch, so let’s download it from there and install it manually.
Open Firefox. Whether it’s your preferred browser or not, it’s very readily accessible in the Ubuntu Live CD environment, so it will be the easiest to use. There’s a shortcut to Firefox in the top panel.

Navigate tohttp://packages.debian.org/sid/amd64/chntpw/download and download the latest version of chntpw for 64-bit machines.
Note: In most cases it would be best to add the Debian Unstable branch to a package manager, but since the Live CD environment will revert to its original state once you reboot, it’ll be faster to just download the .deb file.

 Save the .deb file to the default location.

You can close Firefox if desired. Open a terminal window by clicking on Applications at the top-left of the screen, expanding the Accessories folder, and clicking on Terminal.

In the terminal window, enter the following text, hitting enter after each line:

cd Downloads sudo dpkg –i chntpw*

chntpw will now be installed.
Using chntpw to reset your password
Before running chntpw, you will have to mount the hard drive that contains your Windows installation. In most cases, Ubuntu 9.10 makes this simple.
Click on Places at the top-left of the screen. If your Windows driveis easily identifiable – usually by its size – then left click on it.

If it is not obvious, then click on Computer and check out each hard drive until you find the correct one.

The correct hard drive will have the WINDOWS folder in it. When you find it, make a note of the drive’s label that appears in the menu bar of the file browser.

If you don’t already have one open, start a terminal window by going to Applications > Accessories > Terminal.

In the terminal window, enter the commands

cd /media
ls

pressing enter after each line. You should see one or more strings of text appear; one of those strings should correspond with the string that appeared in the title bar of the file browser earlier.
Change to that directory by entering the command

cd

Since the hard drive label will be very annoying to type in, you can use a shortcut by typing in the first few letters or numbers of the drive label (capitalization matters) and pressing the Tab key. It will automatically complete the rest of the string (if those first few letters or numbers are unique).

We want to switch to a certain Windows directory. Enter the command:

cd WINDOWS/system32/config/

Again, you can use tab-completion to speed up entering this command.

To change or reset the administrator password, enter:

sudo chntpw SAM

SAM is the file that contains your Windows registry. You will see some text appear, including a list of all of the users on your system.

 At the bottom of the terminal window, you should see a prompt that begins with “User Edit Menu:” and offers four choices. We recommend that you clear the password to blank (you can always set a new password in Windows once you log in). To do this, enter “1” and then “y” to confirm.

If you would like to change the password instead, enter “2”, then your desired password, and finally “y” to confirm. 

If you would like to reset or change the password of a user other than the administrator, enter:

sudo chntpw –u SAM

From here, you can follow the same steps as before: enter “1” to reset the password to blank, or “2” to change it to a value you provide.

And that’s it!

Conclusion
chntpw is a very useful utility provided for free by the open source community. It may make you think twice about how secure the Windows login system is, but knowing how to use chntpw can save your tail if your memory fails you two or eight times!

How to Reset Windows Server 2003 Admin Password

How to reset Windows Server 2003 password or administrator password and other user account password turns to be a challenge. Well, do not get worried, for there are always solutions to reset Windows Server 2003 password or administrator password and other user account password.

Here below we will show you one way on how to get Windows Server 2003 password recovery, and then you could get access to the password protected system swiftly, which is that you could try taking use of the Windows Password ResetEnterprise to reset Windows Server 2003 administrator password anytime.

Please follow the following steps to reset Windows Server 2003 admin password:

1

Download and install Windows Password Reset Ultimate

2

Create a password reset CD/DVD or USB drive

Step 1. Put a blank CD/DVD or USB drive into computer, select CD/DVD or USB drive to choose the password reset device, click Start to begin the burning.

Step 2. Click Yes to confirm and continue.

Step 3. The password reset disk is burned, click Close and Yes, take out the disk to insert it into your locked PC to reset Windows 2003 password.

3

Reset Windows 2003 password with the burned CD/CVD or USB drive

Step 1. Reboot the locked PC from the burned CD/DVD or USB drive, firstly select the target Windows system you want to reset password for on the start page, click Next.

Step 2. Select the user account you want to reset password for then, click Next.

Step 3. The Windows 2003 password is reset successfully now, take out the CD/DVD or USB drive, click Reboot and Yes to quit the task to log on your Windows 2003 system freely without any password.

You could login your Windows Server 2003 with the password you changed or with no password without any data losing or file damaging now. From now on, you no longer need to worry about the Windows Server 2003 password recovery any more.