Science and technology

How to reset a Windows password with Linux

If you (or somebody you realize) ever overlook your Windows password, you may be glad to find out about chntpw, a neat Linux utility that you should use to reset a Windows password. For this how-to, I created a Windows digital machine and set the password to go123 on my consumer account, Archit-PC. I additionally created a Live USB with Fedora 27 utilizing the Fedora Media Writer utility.

Here are the steps, together with screenshots, to information you thru the fast and tremendous straightforward strategy of resetting your Windows password with chntpw.

1. Attach the Live USB to your PC and restart from the login display screen, as proven under:

2. Boot from the Live USB and click on on Try Fedora:

three. Log out from live-user and log into root. This step shouldn’t be obligatory, however I choose to make use of the root consumer to bypass any permission points:

four. Install the chntpw utility with the next command (you may want a stay web connection for this):

sudo dnf set up -y chntpw

5. Check which partition ought to be mounted by sfdisk -l …:

and mount that partition (e.g., /dev/sda2) with the next command:

sudo mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/Microsoft/

Change the present listing to the config listing:

cd /mnt/Microsoft/Windows/System32/config/

Also, examine the consumer data within the Security Account Manager (SAM) database:

6. Edit the SAM database with the command:

sudo chntpw -i SAM

Then sort 1 (for Edit consumer information and passwords):

And sort your consumer account identify (i.e., Archit-PC on this instance) for the username:

7. Type 1 to clear the consumer password or 2 to set a brand new password for the Archit-PC consumer, then give up and save the modifications:

eight. Reboot to Windows. If you chose 1 above, you may see there isn’t any password required to log in. Just click on Sign in and you can be logged in:

That’s all there may be to it! I hope this will likely be useful for those who ever must reset a Windows password.

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