How to Recover Windows 2003 Password with PCUnlocker

July 25, 2013 updated by Admin Leave a reply »

Forgetting your Windows 2003 password is not really something that happens too often, but it can happen. This is especially true if you are administering several computers that all are protected with difficult-to-remember passwords. Years ago this may have been a serious issue and could have resulted in formatting the hard drive, but these days it’s not too much of a problem.

In this article we’ll walk you through how to recover Windows 2003 password with PCUnlocker. If you don’t have a PCUnlocker Live CD, you can create on using another computer. Boot up your locked PC from PCUnlocker Live CD and it enables you to recover passwords for both local administrator and domain administrator on Windows 2003.

How to Recover Windows 2003 Password with PCUnlocker?

  1. First of all, you need to create a PCUnlocker Live CD using another computer. Click here to download PCUnlocker and save it on the computer. Once downloaded, extract the ISO file from the ZIP file. Burn the ISO image file to a CD using ISO2Disc, BurnCDCC, ImgBurn or other burning software.
  2. After burning the PCUnlocker ISO image to disc, go to the Windows 2003 computer that you’re trying to gain access to. Insert the PCUnlocker Live CD into your CD/DVD drive and then restart the computer. You’ll probably need to make changes to the boot order in BIOS in order to get the computer to boot from PCUnlocker Live CD.
  3. PCUnlocker program will start once the boot process is complete. It automatically locates the local user accounts on your Windows 2003 system by default. If you want to recover a lost domain password, you need to click on the “Reset Active Directory Password” option and it will then display your Active Directory user accounts.

  4. Select a user account and click on “Reset Password” button. The program will unlock / reset your lost Windows 2003 password in seconds.
  5. Restart the computer and take out PCUnlocker Live CD from the CD/DVD drive. Now when you boot the machine the password for that user should be gone!