How to Reset Your Windows Password

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There are several reasons you might forget your Windows login password. If it happens to you, this guide shows how to reset your Windows password.

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1. Recovering Your Password From the Sign-in Screen

Windows has a convenient feature that allows you to recover your sign-in password from the initial booting screen. The procedure of resetting your password differs, depending on whether you use a PIN or your account password.

If You use a PIN to Sign In …

If you lost your PIN but have a Microsoft account connected to your Windows installation, resetting your password is simply a matter of pressing the I forgot my PIN button.

Your system may take a while before greeting you with a Microsoft account login screen. Either get a code via email from Microsoft that you can use to log in (more convenient, especially if you may have been forgetful), or click on “Use your password instead” to log in with your account’s password.

After you’ve either typed in the code you received or your password, the dialog will ask you if you’re sure you want to reset your PIN, warning you that some apps may want you to sign in again, and some data about you may be lost. Click Continue to reset your PIN.

In the PIN reset window, set your new PIN, and click OK.

If You use Other Methods to Sign In …

If you use your Microsoft account password or other methods to sign in to Windows, click I forgot my password to start the process of recovering your account.

Your alternative communication methods (email, phone numbers, etc.) to receive security codes will be mostly obscured by asterisks. Type in the email or phone number with the parts that are hidden to confirm your identity.

On the next screen, type your code in, and click Next. You’ll be taken to a screen asking you to type in your new password.

2. Using the Password Reset Disk

Using a password reset disk is one of the easiest methods of resetting your forgotten Windows password. The only downside is that you need to have the password reset disk created beforehand.

Creating the Password Reset Disk

It may be too late, but in the off-chance that you’re reading this before losing your password, the instructions are pretty straightforward.

First, insert a USB thumb drive into your system. Make sure it’s a drive that you won’t lose, as it will be a necessity if you lose your password. After you the drive is in and detected, click on the Start menu, and type “password reset disk.”

Find the Create password reset disk control panel app.

Click on the app. If the wizard doesn’t open within a few minutes, restart the Windows Explorer process by pressing Ctrl + Shift + Esc, looking for Windows Explorer in the list of processes in your task manager, and clicking the Restart button near the top of the window.

Restarting Windows Explorer shows an extra icon in the taskbar that wasn’t there before. That’s the wizard. Click on it, then click Next.

Choose your thumb drive in the wizard’s second pane. Type in your current password (not your login PIN, if you use one).

Wait for the password recovery disk to be done, and wrap up the wizard. If you look inside the contents of the drive, you’ll see a .psw file. That’s an RSA2 key meant to authenticate you and is unique to your system.

Using the Password Reset Disk

This will only work for local accounts – not accounts managed by Microsoft. If you are using a Microsoft account for Windows, see the method above.

Try your password again. If it fails, click OK, and insert your password reset disk. Click Reset Password, go through the wizard until you can select Password Reset Disk as your method, then click Next.

Type your new password, confirm it, create a hint for it, and you’re done!

3. Reset Your Password by Using the Ease of Access Button

This nifty hack is a little-known method of resetting a Windows password. If you missed making a password reset disk and don’t want to use extra software, this will help, but it requires modification of some of your system files, which will compromise your ability to use accessibility tools, at least temporarily.

It’s important that you remain as careful and vigilant of instructions as possible when modifying system files. While it’s not impossible to recover from an accidental deletion of important files, it’s really not something you want to add to your day.

To reset the password, access, the login screen and click the power button. Hold Shift on your keyboard while clicking Restart to reach a recovery menu.

Go to Troubleshoot -> Advanced Options -> Command Prompt.

Carefully type the commands below, and execute them one after the other.

move c:\Windows\System32\Utilman.exe c:\Windows\System32\Utilman.exe.bak
copy c:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe c:\Windows\System32\Utilman.exe

You’re replacing utilman.exe with cmd.exe so that pressing the Ease of Access button will result in a command prompt and create a backup of utilman.exe to be used again.

Close the command prompt, and click Continue to boot into Windows again. Click on the Ease of access button in the bottom corner of the Windows login screen. This action will launch the command prompt.

Our goal is to create a new local admin account with elevated privileges on your login screen.

In the command prompt, use the below commands one after the other, while replacing <username> with a new username of your choosing. In my case, I used “testuser” as my new username.

net user <username> /add
net localgroup administrators <username> /add

A new user account with the new username will be created. Select the new account from the login screen, and log in to your Windows system.

Once logged in, you can reset the other account’s password from the Local Users and Groups window. Access it by searching for lusrmgr.msc in the Start menu.

While many of the older hackier ways no longer exist, these Windows password reset methods (especially the last one) remain tried-and-true powerful ways of making sure you can log back in to your system. If you’re experiencing other kinds of sign-in errors, learn how to fix the Sign-in option is disabled error on Windows!

All images and screenshots by Miguel Leiva-Gomez.

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Miguel Leiva-Gomez

Miguel has been a business growth and technology expert for more than a decade and has written software for even longer. From his little castle in Romania, he presents cold and analytical perspectives to things that affect the tech world.

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