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Lost Your Windows Password? Fix It Yourself!

So many of the posts I read on the ‘net about removing a forgotten Windows password recommend using a Linux boot disc called “l0pht crack.” It’s a brute force cracking application, so it basically just searches millions of alphanumeric combinations until it finds the one that works. Personally, I’ve never understood why. There are two perfectly good ways to do it that are much faster and much easier.

In Windows XP, your first stop is safe mode. From a cold boot (read: your computer was off, and you turned it back on), hold down the F8 key on your keyboard immediately after the power on self test screen appears. Select safe mode from the boot menu, and choose Administrator from the Windows Welcome screen. You can then head over to the control panel and remove the password on any other account on your system.

But what if your Admin account has a password on it that you don’t know?

Well, again, you could use l0pht, but I wouldn’t bother with it. Instead, go and download Offline NT Password and Registry Editor. It’s a free bootable CD image and the download is only 3mb. If you don’t know how to burn ISO images, also download IsoBurner which makes the process totally painless.

The author of the Offline Editor has a complete walkthrough on his page, and it’s a good idea to print it out so you can refer to it during the process. It may look a little intimidating at first, but it’s not. Carefully read through the text and you’ll see it’s really quite simple. You need to know where your registry is located (almost always C:\Windows\System32\Config).

Once you set the location and the program proceeds, you want to use option 1 - password reset. On the next menu, you again want option 1 - edit user data and passwords. Now you get a list of users, each one with a HEX code in front of it (like 03e9). Type in that code to select a user, and again press 1 - blank password.

Now press q to quit, agree tat you want to save changes to the registry, and you’re done! Reboot, and your password woes are over.

There, wasn’t that easy?

Tags: password   Posted in Apps, Freeware, Security, Windows