There may be times when you may have forgotten your Windows passwords and are unable to login to your PC, this can cause huge frustrations, if you do not have any other users on the PC, or do not have access to the administration account.
The most dire consequences of forgetting your password could be reformatting and reinstalling your OS, however there is a way in which you can reset lost Windows passwords for your computer. In this article, I’ll walk you through the steps of using a password reset CD to reset forgotten Windows password with ease.
How to reset forgotten Windows password? The procedure can be divided into 3 steps:
Step 1: Create a Windows Password Reset CD
- To prepare for the password-resetting procedure, you need another computer to connect to the Internet, download the Reset Windows Password utility.
- Unzip the download file which contains an ISO image file: ResetWindowsPwd.iso.
- Next, burn the ISO image to a CD/DVD with any CD burning software such as BurnCDCC. A Windows password reset disk will be ready in one or two minutes.
Step 2: Boot Your Locked PC from the Password Reset CD
- Now that you’ve prepared the Windows password reset CD, go to the computer for which you have forgotten the password.
- Insert the Windows password reset CD and turn on the computer.
- When it is powered on, check the boot-screen for setup key (i.e. DELETE key, F8 key, F2 key) to enter BIOS Setup Utility.
- Change its BIOS settings to make it try to boot from the CD first.
Step 3: Reset Forgotten Windows Password
- Once you have configured the BIOS correctly, your computer will boot from the Windows password reset CD.
- After a while, the boot CD will launch the Reset Windows Password program.
- Choose the SAM registry hive from the list, the program will display a list of Windows user accounts on the computer.
- Select the user account whose password you forgot, then click Reset Password button.
- It will reset your forgotten Windows password in no time.
You’ve done! Eject the password reset CD and restart your computer, you can then log in to Windows system without entering a password. With the password reset CD you can reset forgotten Windows password on Windows 8, 7, Vista, XP and Windows Server 2008, 2003 and 2000. It also supports 64-bit operating system.