Change a forgotten Windows password

Change a forgotten Windows password

I want to change my Windows password, but I can't remember it. How can I get around this?

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Try Ophcrack. That will allow you to boot from a CD and crack the password on the fly. No fuss, no muss and it does work – at least for passwords that fall within the rainbow table parameters of 1 to 14 characters in length and composed of characters contained in this set:

0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ!"#$%&' ()*+,-./:;&<=>?@[]^_`{|}~ (including the space character)

If that doesn't work, a tool that's worked well for me is NTAccess which allows you to boot the system and reset the administrator password.

Click here for questions and answers from all of our security experts.

More on this topic:

  • Password Hardening Journal
    One of the forgotten elements of a truly secure infrastructure is password security. If a hacker can break through your password defenses, he will have unchecked access to everything that an authorized user or even a network administrator has. Check out the pieces in this journal to find out how to secure your organization at this often overlooked password level.
  • How to Bypass BIOS Passwords
    BIOS passwords can be a liability if a user forgets his password. Here are a few tips and tricks that can help to bypass or reset the BIOS password on most systems.
  • How to crack a password
    In this tip find out how hackers exploit weaknesses so you know how to stop them
  • NetBIOS Auditing Tool
    Use this tool to crack passwords on Windows network shares

This was first published in June 2006

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