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CyberNotes: Reset a Windows Admin Password (XP or


Vista)

Tutorial Thursday

The other day I had someone who ran into a big problem that many of us hope to never come across. What happened was the
user had forgotten the administrator password for their Windows Vista machine, and had no idea how they could log on. I’ve
had people ask how to do this kind of thing in the past, but had never actually looked for a viable solution myself.

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CyberNotes: Reset a Windows Admin Password (XP or Vista) Page 2 of 10

I was determined to find a workaround this time, and it had to be one that didn’t involve reinstalling Windows. That’s when I
came across the free Trinity Rescue Kit, which turned out to be exactly what the doctor ordered. As you might expect this is a
Linux-based password reset tool, and it takes no time at all to put it to work. In fact this works so well that it will make you
think twice about the security of your own system!

Here’s what you have to do:

1. Download and burn the Trinity Rescue Kit (TRK) ISO image to a CD or DVD.
2. Restart your computer, and make sure it boots from the TRK CD/DVD.
3. When presented with the TRK menu be sure to select the first option that reads Run Trinity Rescue Kit 3.3 (default):

4. TRK will take a minute or so to finish loading, and when it’s done you should be left with a prompt where you can type
your commands. Note that Steps 5 and 6 are not needed to change a password, but can be helpful.
5. The main command we’ll be working with is winpass, and for getting started you should type winpass -l to see a list of
users on the machine. When you type that command it will ask you which drive you want the user list retrieved from, and
in most cases you’ll want to type the number 1 followed by the Enter key (this selects the primary partition):

6. After you’ve selected the partition you’ll be presented with a list of users on the machine along with what accounts have
been disabled or locked:

7. You should once again be at a prompt, and this time we’re actually going to change or reset a password for one of the
accounts on the machine. At the prompt type:
winpass -u Administrator
In this example “Administrator” is the username you want to reset the password for. Replace it with the username you’re
working with.
8. You’ll now be asked which partition you’d like to have analyzed/mounted just like in Step 5, and you’ll likely want to
select the first one. After that you can look under the Account Bits section which lets you know whether the user’s
password ever expires, if the account is disabled, and more. What you’ll want to focus on, however, is the User Edit
Menu that lists the type of operations you can perform on the account. The easiest thing for you would probably be to
choose the first option, which will just clear the password on the account:

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9. That’s all there is to it. After that you should receive a message stating that a backup of the account has been made, and all
you have to do now is restart the computer. If you’ve chosen to clear the password the next time you boot up you want to
be sure to leave the password blank.

If you look at the options available in Step 8 you’ll also notice that there are other things you can do to accounts on the machine.
This includes changing a password, promoting a non-admin user to an administrator, or enabling a disabled account. Once you
get the hang of this tool you’ll pretty much be able to give yourself full access to any Windows machine that you can physically
get your hands on. Crazy, huh?

Get Trinity Rescue Kit

October 2nd, 2008 Written by Ryan


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Tags:

 Software, Windows, Computers, Downloads, How To, Password, Windows Vista, Windows XP

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1.
AnonymousOctober 2, 2008 at 7:09 am

Looks to be similar to this program I have used several time.


[home.eunet.no]
Works well

Reply

2.

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CyberNotes: Reset a Windows Admin Password (XP or Vista) Page 4 of 10

AnonymousOctober 2, 2008 at 7:19 am

Hiren’s BootCD does this to and has a lot more tools to use.

[9down.com]

Reply

3.
SchwinnOctober 2, 2008 at 8:25 am

UBCD has PNorgahl’s software on it, along with a bunch of other useful tools, too.

[ultimatebootcd.com]

Reply

4.
Ted MurphyOctober 2, 2008 at 8:59 am

Great post — I’ve needed this in the past, and frankly I was unable to find a solution. Eventually remembered the
password.

Sorry, but I wish you had the links to Digg or Stumbleupon more clearly available on this article.

Reply

5.
AnonymousOctober 2, 2008 at 11:41 am

Use Ophcrack (Google it). It has an XP and a Vista version as well. It won’t clear your password- it’ll actually tell you the
passwords to all the users on the machine.

Reply


userJune 5, 2010 at 12:44 am

yah but it won’t tell u the password for complicated ones like oes with letters AND numbers

6.
SchwinnOctober 2, 2008 at 12:24 pm

@Ted Murphy: There is an icon in the footer, the left-most one, that has all the networking links on it – I assume this is to
digg/SU the story?

@Anonymous (previous post): Problem with ophcrack is that it requires rainbow tables, which are not as easy to find…
unless you know of a better way?

Reply

7.
AnonymousOctober 2, 2008 at 1:40 pm

I know this doesn’t “reset” the password and doesn’t work 100% of the time, but if you start XP in safe mode there should
be an administrator account (unless it’s been manually deleted) you can log in to without a password. Then just open the
control panel, create a new account, restart, login, and copy you’re settings over.

Reply

8.

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CyberNotes: Reset a Windows Admin Password (XP or Vista) Page 5 of 10

AnonymousOctober 3, 2008 at 10:40 am

None works with Dell laptops.

Reply

9.
RyanAuthorOctober 4, 2008 at 8:22 am

Looks like some of you guys have found similar tools to get the job done!

Ted Murphy wrote:

Sorry, but I wish you had the links to Digg or Stumbleupon more clearly available on this article.

As Schwinn pointed out there is a button in the bottom footer of the article for doing exactly this. Just hover over it with
your mouse and you should see all of the links you’re asking for.

Reply

10.
blasztaOctober 5, 2008 at 9:49 pm

@Schwinn

You can download the rainbow table at the SF project page (not in the program page)in [sourceforge.net]

And AFAIK it can only crack password using alpha numeric.

But it still useful if you inherit a system from a sysadmin that “forgot” to tell you his password for the entire system.

Reply

11.
AsgardNovember 6, 2008 at 12:03 am

A simpler solution is to use PCLoginNow – you download the image, make a bootable disk, boot from it – but instead of
command line, it’s a windows style graphical interface – super easy to use, fast, no thinking needed

Reply

12.
hoppiNovember 20, 2008 at 10:09 am

i forgot my vista admin password and tried to crack it by remembering it. i tried about 30 different passwords and my
account got locked. so i started searching online.
1) ophcrack couldnt crack it becoz it can only crack alphanumeric passwords with the tables it has, unless u download
more rainbow tables.
2) windows key enterprise also didnt do the job
3)Active@Password Changer turned out not to work for vista inspite of claims to the contrary
4) and now im trying trinity and i hope it works.

Reply

13.
Michael ArmstrongOctober 2, 2009 at 4:07 am

here is the methods I know.

The first thing which you check if you forget login password. When we install Windows, it automatically creates an
account “Administrator” and sets its password to blank. So if you have forget Your user account password then try this:
Start system and when you See Windows Welcome screen / Login screen, press ctrl+alt+del keys Twice and it’ll show

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CyberNotes: Reset a Windows Admin Password (XP or Vista) Page 6 of 10

Classic Login box. Now type “Administrator” (without quotes) in Username and leave Password field blank. Now press
Enter and you should be able to log in Windows.
Now you can reset your account password from “Control Panel -> User Accounts”.
Same thing can be done using Safe Mode. In Safe Mode Windows will show this in-built Administrator account in Login
screen.

Windows XP and further versions also provide another method to recover forgotten Password by using “Reset Disk”. If
you created a Password Reset Disk in Past, you can use that disk to reset the password.

Reply

14.
UleaDecember 10, 2009 at 10:02 am

IT REALLY WORKS

Reply

15.
TolyDecember 23, 2009 at 1:32 am

A few days ago, I had met the headache things that I had forgotten Windows login password. The login screen rejected my
passwords. I was frustrated because there was very important data on my disk and I couldn’t reinstall the OS. ………….
However, I fortunately got to know the Windows Password Unlocker, which is a professional windows password
recovery tool for us to [sn.im] instantly yet no data loss.

Reply

16.
AnonymousDecember 24, 2009 at 3:18 am

Forgot or lost Windows password? reset Windows 7 password with Password Unlocker Bundle, one of whose functions
is to recover windows password for Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 2003 Server, Windows
Vista, Windows 7. ect. This password recovery Bundle is based on friendly GUI, even a computer novice can control the
whole process freely. Besides, password unlocker bundle saves a lot trouble. It helps to create a windows password reset
CD, with which, you can remove the admin password even you have logged out the computer, yet no reinstalling, no data
loss!
Password Unlocker Bundle is a professinaol password recovery kit, which contains series of password recovery tools:
Windows password recovery, PDF password recovery, MS documents password recovery, MS Excel password
recovery, WinZIP/ZIP password recovery, WinRAR/RAR password recovery, MS SQL password recovery,
Internet password recovery, Windows Live/MSN password recovery, MS Access password recovery, Outlook
password recovery, and Outlook Express password recovery, etc., No matter you are at home or in office ,the bundle
helps to reset the password we forgot or lost. To grasp the opportunity.

Reply

17.
ChrisJanuary 27, 2010 at 8:33 pm

It is difficult to retrieve a forgotten windows administrator password. I will reinstall my OS if i forget it. But if you don’t
want to reinstall you windows OS ,you can remove the password with a windows password recovery disk.

Reply

18.
MickAugust 30, 2010 at 6:48 pm

Trinity Rescue Kit is not easy to use, I usually use the Windows Password Reset Kit 1.5 instead.

Reply

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