Rufus does work well If you are trying to get through to "Windows Password" However if you are locked out at the HDD (hard drive) password that is set by the computer manufacturer, then you must call them to get the master password that is set on the "hard drive" when it was bought.
Great tool. I've been using a custom linux distro where I can just do it in a few clicks with a GUI. Sometimes the SAM file isn't in the right location and cmd line doesn't work right. I think it should be worth mentioning that if the drive is encrypted, you will fubar the entire thing by doing a SAM file related PW reset. You also cannot unlock accounts that use a Microsoft Account login with any tool that I've used/found.
It's funny you made this video today. I was tasked to install something on a work machine with lost admin password. I just booted Kali and used chntpw only to discover the only admin was the Administrator account. We discovered that a previous staff was using Administrator as normal user with her personal Gmail logged in and League of Legends installation files in her download folder. I removed quite a lot of things before proceeding
There is a "trick" you could do if all you have is a Windows install media (CD/DVD/USB/etc.). Boot into that, then at the start screen press Shift-F10 to open the command prompt. Then you can rename the file d:\windows\system32\utilman.exe to something else temporarily, whatever you want - just so you can undo this later. Copy d:\windows\system32\cmd.exe as a replacement to the above file. Then reboot the machine without the install media. When asked for login credentials, click the Utility Manager icon (should be bottom left). This now opens a command line window. At which point you can use the NET USER command to rest passwords all you like. Add extra users, set them as administrator, whatever you please. No need to know any password. Been a trick for a long while now, I know it worked in W7, and it still does in W10.
That's exactly the method I use. You can rename any of the Accessibility Tools to be replaced by cmd.exe. Also, later on cmd if you just use the command "net user" it will list all the available usernames, then you pick one and input "net user " and it will change/apply the to the . Sometimes it will output that you don't have permission for that, so you can use the Administrator account instead. Even after changing said account it might not show up, and that's because it's not active, so, again on cmd you input "net user administrator /active:yes" and that account will now show in the login window and you can log in with the password you gave it.
One tip: if you run Windows 10, be sure to do a "complete" shutdown, by holding 'Shift' when you click on the Shutdown icon. Apparently Windows 10 does some hybrid/partial shutdown by default. Took a while to figure out why normally powering down wasn't doing the trick....
I had the exact same problem, it had a message that the Windows is hibernated and it failed. It took me some time to figure it out. I also hold the Shift key while shutting windows down and it worked!
Chris - I see that you enabled the admin, while other login accounts were listed.. Was not this video about resetting forgotten passwords? Is the procedure the same for a regular account [such as Titus]? Will it function the same? thanks. dw
Brilliant guide, nice and clear and takes you through every step. More importantly its the only guide that actually worked after hours of searching! Thanks a lot.
Thanks Chris, this was really handy to know as I've just "upgraded" my fairly old (2006 vintage) machine from Win7 to Win10. It became apparent that at some point I'd set a password for my default user account, and that I'd totally forgotten that I'd done that, and of course what the password was (I tried everything I could think of, but nothing worked). Anyway, I followed your instructions and apart from a problem I had with the USB thumb drive I was using (it was one of those which converts an SD card to USB in an adapter), and used a "proper" one, it worked exactly as it should. A possible side-effect was that the next time I ran MS Outlook, it seemed to have "forgotten" all the email passwords for my email accounts, and I've had to put them back into the config. Assuming this is NOT a coincidence, I presume Outlook is using the same file for its email account password that the Windows account manager is using? Thanks for your hard work, Chris, and I hope 2020 is a good year for you and yours.
This is why you should have a bios password to stop people booting from usb. Also this won't work if the drive has bitlocker enabled. Microsoft know the passwords can be easily reset which is why they advice you use bios passwords and encryption.
@@haydenborst6272 The battery is not for BIOS its for CMOS. But you will have a problem if your System/Mainboard uses NVRAM to store BIOS configuration parameters because there is no separate battery...its in the NVRAM module an you can not pull it out.
Thanks! I just got this to work on an old Dell Optiplex (Vista) machine. It was a little different, and I had to go back a few times, but finally figured it out. It is easier than most other procedures I found, which most wouldn't work on Vista.
Excellent Video, I used it for a computer at work that disconnected from the domain, i enabled the Administrator account reconnected it to the domain and logged in and then turned the Admin Off, Thans Chirs!!
Nice, no muss - no fuss. Also complies with my daytime employer/s, "no use of third party software" rule. One more usb drive to put in my quick fix stash. I'll have a rash of lockouts in the last week of August/first week of September and again from a week before Christmas until New Years Day. This will save me a lot of time.
Thank soooooooo much. You really saved me a lot. I joined my PC to a network and after some months, I had to change the account user name and password from the domain AD for my own reasons. After doing this successfully, I got this error "The trust relationship between this workstation and the primary domain failed " when I tried signing in using the new username and password so the only option was to unjoin it from the network and join it again BUT I had to first login with the local Administrator account which I did not Know and this stressed me a lot but you saved me. Thank You so much. God Bless you for sharing this.
Linux is just as easy and even easier. Just launch into single use mode from grub and there you go. The only wait you can protect yourself is drive encryption.
Windows Vista doesn't show user accounts in computer management. I did get it figured out from another video. Also, Windows 7 Ultimate is a little different. To quit, type "!" instead of "q" to quit. Took me a few minutes to see that, as I was following this video.
Hi Chris, thanks for the video, Following this i have a quick question to ask, how this is going to work if you have your hard drive encrypted (like is it in the most enterprises today)?
YO! I made a really old video on this exact stuff back in the xp days. Check it out. Even has the setup music. Microsoft did not claim it for some reason. ua-cam.com/video/xwjLqr65oM8/v-deo.html&t
@@bizzystradlin7751 sorry but this is still a thing and it does work, you either run on a system with a domain controller and your user has limited access to the command line or you did not open cmd as administrator, also obviously dont include the single quotes. as that command is something i use a lot when i run my automated setup scripts at my job.
Dvizz zzivD True, and thank you for your answer. I’m currently using Arch + Manjaro, and its awesome! Im never going back to Windows (unless it’s some type of a need)
Thank You , needed this so much . I just had to put hard drive in another computer , could no access bios , to boot to usb . I was like 3 days later and like , why didn't I just slap the hard drive in other computer .
Forgot your password in MacOS? Press COMMAND+R at boot to enter recovery mode, open terminal and type "resetpassword" (no space or quotes). That simple!!!!
Thank you for the idea on how to reset the password. my case was Win 10 on Virtual Box, I had to use Hiren's Boot Cd and go to the settings of Virtual Box to add a new hard as IDE then map it with the image of Hiren's boot cd.
Hi Chris I eventually got going but you may like to consider a few providoes. My bios didn't support booting off the USB stick. No worries, I created a bootable CD using the iso file. Unfortunately a used a Windows me laptop. Need Windows xp or above for the program to create the bootable stick. Running the bootable CD worked I reached finding the partition where windows is. It reported that Windows was in hibernate mode and it would not mount the disk. Even asking to ignore this, it still didn't work. Going into Windows and asking to Shut Down did not help. The way around this is when Windows starts up, press the power switch and force it to turn off. After a couple of times of doing this, you get the message repair. Go into options and select Power down PC. Swapping back to the bootable CD you now can mount the the partition. Many thanks for your vidéo
Chris, I just installed a second SSD. While working on that (partitioning, mounting with fstab, changing permissions) I got this idea: the best protection against ransomware is to use encrypted partitions, the criminals can't encrypt it if you encrypted it yourself, right? Maybe you could look into that and do a video on it. How easy or difficult is it to set up Linux with full encryption for your partitions. Do you get any performance penalty? Is there any risk? How exactly does this encryption work (not the technical process of encryption but the usage of an encrypted system)?
You definitely can encrypt already encrypted files, i don't know if there is something on OS level that would prevent it, but you can put encryption on top encryption on ordinary files as many times as you want, provided the fact that decrypting them would become more painful the more encryption you have
If your encrypted volume is mounted, the ransomware can still encrypt your files. It's common for Linux distros to offer whole disk encryption as a simple checkbox option at install. I've had no trouble with this. With encryption acceleration built into modern CPUs, you shouldn't notice much if any performance impact.
So encryption doesn't offer any protection against ransomware. Bummer. Thanks for the explanation. All right, my next attempt. Keeping the partition isolated from the external world with the exception of a particular service (Steam/Battlenet) but having full access to it on your local system. If that works then that would be a great video.
NIce trick. Unfortunately this will not work if you have secure boot properly setup and a bios password. But I believe that there are just so many security issues in windows that it does not matter anymore. BTW I fully switched to linux on my thinkpad x230 as a daily driver for school with a windows vm for office and closed sourced stuff. Gonna make the switch on the desktop when I get a bit more powerful hardware and when the anti cheat stuff in games are fixed. Cheers!
Ali Rahman despite all my failled attempts to install arch... I know I am a brainlet. I am using antergos. I was using Linux mint before that for almost a year. Then I checked out kde neon. Fell in love with kde. But neon was Debian based and I did not want that, so I just installed the plasma desktop on antergos. What about you? What distro are *you* using and if so, how did you end up on it?
Chris, I installed the game Life is Strange on Linux (an ext4-partition), the performance was not good so I installed it on Windows too. It seems that playing this game on Linux (probably with OpenGL) costs me around 30-50% FPS while using the same settings, to the point that it makes the game unplayable on Linux while it is pretty well playable on Windows with my hardware (i5-750 and HD 7850) even though there clearly is some stutter because of a CPU-bottleneck. On Windows I could put MSAA on 2x and still the FPS was a lot higher. It seems that this is not one of the games which works well on Linux, unfortunately. The game has native Linux support but the developer and/or AMD put a lot less effor in supporting OpenGL than in supporting DX9 and that is being shown by the system requirements on PCGamingWiki.
looks exactly like "Trinity", I've used for over a decade... worked on a Win10 box recently. it's old AF, meaning Winders never bothered to fix anything.
Thank you so much for such a valuable video sir. I don't know words to thank you. But I only have a single problem. Is there any way to brute force the pins since we have only 10000 combinations? Password resetting didn't recover the pin for my case. Thank you so much again
After plugging in the usb to the locked computer, all you have to do is reset it? I tried that and nothing happened. I wen the boot menu and secure boot is on idk if that has something to do with it.
Awesome method, but i think you confuse it a little. Anyone would go ahead and try to reset immediately the pass for the account used and not the admin account. It wdnt be a problem wd it? it seems the tut above it is for people with virus in the comp that needs clean up.
I teach my students the same technique as "benriful" from this thread do and it works like a charm. All they need to do is to download Windows- 10 or Server 2012/16 R2 and Rufus to put the installation media on a USB drive. It should work with any version but I haven't tried. Boot windows installation CD or USB. Then press Shift + F10 for a dos-prompt. Run Diskpart to figure out the letter of your system drive. X:\diskpart.exe DISKPART> list volume Mine was D:\ so I change to D:\ and navigate to system32 Exit the diskpart utility. DISKPART> exit X:\> d: D:\> cd windows D:\Windows> cd system32 Back up utilman.exe D:\Windows\System32> copy utilman.exe utilmantemp.exe Back up your cmd.exe just in case. D:\Windows\System32> copy cmd.exe cmdtemp.exe Remove utilman.exe D:\Windows\System32> del utilman.exe Let your cmd.exe masquerade as utilman.exe D:\Windows\System32> rename cmd.exe utilman.exe Remove cd/usb and reboot the computer Klick the ease of access button on the login screen. In the cmd window that opens type: C:\Windows\System32> control userpasswords2 Remove or change the password on any user you want. Exit the cmd prompt and log on to the computer with no or new password. Now you should restore your files to their original state. Restart and boot from install media again. Press Shift + F10 for dos-prompt. Navigate to your system disk and system32 to restore files. Delete utilman.exe and replace it with the backup file. D:\Windows\System32> del utilman.exe D:\Windows\System32> rename utilmantemp.exe utilman.exe Reboot and you're done! I had problems breaking into domain locked computers with no local user but got around it using this technique in combination with rebooting in fail safe mode (Press F8), and then opening a cmd prompt to active the local administrator account using: C:\Windows\System32> control userpasswords After that I could disable the domain login and remove the domain administrator. The domain administrator account wouldn't let me change password using "control userpasswords2" and didn't let me enabling the local administrator account using "control userpasswords" unless I boot into failsafe mode. But beware. I had to change password on the domain administrator before deleting it to use the account when uninstalling a antivirus client and its firewall. My local administrator wasn't allowed to tamper with previously installed security applications.
It looks extremely helpful. I am struggling with Dell with Win 8.1. Unfortunately the tool can't find the windows partition. Just the whole disk. With Macrium Reflect I can see all of the partitions including the one with windows. Any tip?
loot at my recent post... copy offline the following files to another computer, reset then put them back... (don't forget to back them up first by copying them into a backup folder or something) c:\users\UserNameToBeReset\NTUSER.DAT c:\Windows\System32\config\SYSTEM c:\Windows\System32\config\SOFTWARE c:\Windows\System32\config\SECURITY c:\Windows\System32\config\SAM c:\Windows\System32\config\DEFAULT
If it still holds true, when you reset a users password through this route you can lose access to any encrypted files the user may have had. Correct me if this has changed.
I've been using this tool for ages. However, I recently tried it on a Lenovo laptop and it doesn't work. If the account has administrator privileges, you have to have to have the password to overwrite it.
Just indicate you have forgotten your password and/or pin. Microsoft will email or text (your choice) a code. Enter the code; reset your password; done. Easy! (You may have to re-type a string of characters to prove you are not a computer somewhere in the process.)
I don't even know where to begin but I know I need help. Did I say please yet? If "you" can I would be very grateful & will definitely go do a favor for someone too. Probably the best advice is Buy New Computer. Dell Dimension 4400 (oh hell yeh!) When it "starts" it goes to windows can't start Repair ( recommended) Start Normally If I choose Start Normally It flashes the Windows 7 4 color graphic thing for an instant & revirt's to black screen w the symbol - upper left corner. From here even if I go F8 for list of start up options 3 safe modes last know point debugger that list I've tried all of them it always loops back to black screen. If I choose repair it always says Sorry can't repair right? Send or don't send. So if I expand the report window I guess it's called there's a link to Microsoft & if I put mouse over & right click & open I get to control panel? Window Left side Library Recent places & Computer. Right? So This Computer I bought used so it's not mine until now uh.....I found Windows 7 Start up Run as administrator & yeh it opens choose Lang Eng Starts to install but gets To the 2nd sec. On progress bar...then tells me missing drivers ok so I literally opened every Every file on C drive but Noooooo. In repair if I go to Advanced options It asks for Password & I don't know it. If I did maybe I could solve on my own. Ha! Mmmm... .oh yeh I have 8 giga flash drive w/ windows 8 ( that's what I want to run) & Rufus. Back at that window it always opens up to txt. Files but if I expand I can choose all files.oh boy.... There F: shows flash and contents. Oh yeh on C: there's a X boot "partician" if that's what it's called. Nothing in there helps. Got WiFi & an Android Motorola G3... Tired of living............. . In the past......but Newer comp. in OCTOBER. Everything is fine it just be a lot cooler if I could get online with my wide screen keyboard mouse instead of watching my phone screen for internet. I watched vid. About Android on Old PC too. As long as I don't have to run XP or Vista or 7 I guess I don't care what OS I use..... I've never used anything past Win 7 so it's can only get better from here. I live in Mexico & tech help is limited for me. So this message is like a Radio Telescope Broadcasting in every direction as far as it can Go. But yeh sure I hope it will reach Intelligent Life & that the Intellegent Life Will Respond. Is there anybody Out there?🤖👽🤓🤔
Iv'e done this for money in the past (With the tools in Kali). Pretty silly and simple, sure. But it's the same with most IT related things. Whats simple for one is hell for another. I feel a bit sorry for the clients some times when i'm sent out to install some stuff like games from the Microsoft store or set up email etc.
Thanks "Luftbubblan", appreciate your posts. UPDATE: 11-07-19 - After everything I tried failed to work, I came back to these posts and started reading them. I noticed a post by "Luftbubblan" about using the tools in Kali. It was one option I had not tried. Kali and the tools within it WORKED! Thanks "Luftbubblan", appreciate your posts.
That would be more direct, if you did not have administrator access. But if your administrator account is enabled, and you know the password, then your administrator account could reset passwords for other accounts. In this video, he showed how to get administrator access, which once logged in, gives you access to do whatever else you decide to do. The procedure for resetting the other logins would essentially be the same as what we watched for resetting the administrator account.
So, I got a computer today and had this very issue. Problem is, when I try to boot this thumb drive, I get a Kernel Panic message. So, it probably doesn't work on everything. Back to the search for a Windows 10 password hacker...
I spoke too soon. Was able to open and get in as admin. Looks like the previous user loaded win 10 pro without activation. So one in it won't let me make user changes. Using your script, I noticed password not required has an X. Admin does not. The user pw is on "blank" but it ask for a pin or pw.
Hi Chris. I just saw your video. I forgot my password, and I actually took the laptop to a tech place, and they were going to copy the data and put it back on, but the 32-bit encryption was somehow put on. Does this work even with that on? And if so, it won't delete my files, correct?
Does it delete the files of the user when you reset the pwd, like the same feature from on windows? By the way it still works with the last version 21H1?
I have used this successfully on a number of older machines, but I've tried it with a few new Windows 10 machines and it gets stuck at "botting kernel". I can't seem to find any information about how to get past that.
Not certain about the points made but ,if anyone else wants to discover admin password recovery windows try Bablim Simple Code Booster(do a search on google ) ? Ive heard some unbelievable things about it and my work buddy got amazing results with it.
trying this on windows 10 at the first option to boot, i hit enter and just get a kernel panic and its stuck... anyone have any suggestions? other methods have failed as well i'm at the point where it might be easier to rebuild.
So what do you do for a VM system? Cause it is the VM systems that give us the most problems. A month or two ago I went to boot up my W10 VM system and much to my chagrin I realized I had forgotten the password. Granted I last used the password months or more ago but still. So your video says this solution doesn't work for VMs. What does work for VMs?
Weird, not working for me. I make all the changes, save the hive data, reboot, and i don't get the Administrator account, nor i can get into another account that i cleared the password. Everything stays the same.
Trying to reset a HP pavilion x360. It will not boot off the Flash drive I made following the instructions. Boot menu won't recognize it, and when i set it to boot in bios, It just will not boot. any thoughts would be appreciated.
Having a issue here, when plugging the USB into the locked computer it isnt booting up as yours. Also when trying to Boot via USB it doesn't appear. what am i doing wrong ?
I really appreciate your videos, I learn a lot, Thanks. You stated in this video "I've never seen it actually not work." Well, it's not working for me. I don't have either the Windows 8 recovery or original discs (this is a friends PC.) You don't mention changing to either UEFI Boot or Legacy boot. When I select UEFI Boot it WILL NOT boot with CD/DVD drive or USB drive. Legacy Boot will boot the CD/DVD drive and USB drive but the chntpwd program stops with the following line at top of screen: "Oops: 0002 [#1]" and last line on screen reads "Kernel Panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init! exitcode=0x00000009" and locks at that point. I tried all the Boot options listed with no change to last line. Unfortunately I never get to the default options to pick. Any ideas? Would appreciate any help.
UPDATE: 11-07-19 - After everything I tried failed to work, I came back to these posts and started reading them. I noticed a post by "Luftbubblan" about using the tools in Kali. It was one option I had not tried. Kali and the tools within it WORKED! Thanks "Luftbubblan", appreciate your posts.
I know this is an old vid, but using this info, I cannot get the laptop with the usb to start with the USB iso. There's a gap in the info for me. I have rufus on my PC, put the iso on the usb and plugged the usb into the laptop. it's an HP and hasn't been used in 3 years. no amount of restarting, getting into auto repair (diagnosing pc) has given me any sort of results. I cannot get to the cmd prompt because it goes to the user password to access that. Top it off, the laptop has partitions.. I don't know why but looks like 3 or more. C is boot, then there is X and I forget what the others were. And it won't boot from the usb still.
Does it work with a Bitlocker encrypted drive? I have a old encrypted win installation partition which i forgot the password to..... even lost the encryption keys.... Still keeping it in hope i remember which password i used...
Answer in FAQ: No luck for me :( "I use full disk encryption, like Bitlocker, and even if I do remember the Bitlocker password I have forgotten the windows password No support for encrypted disks, even if you know the password to open it. Sorry. No plans to support it for the moment."
Hi Chris, I know this video has been posted more than 2 years, is there a way where in can edit the settings on every username? Say I want to enable/disable "Passwd not required"
I tried a couple different videos before I found this one. Unfortunately, now the laptop I've been trying to reset password on is on a reboot loop. I downloaded the image in this video to a usb but now can't get the problem laptop to startup properly. Can you help?? Thank you in advance.
i did all of it and when i press -ctr alt del- it rebooted and said "your pc ran into a problem, we need to restart your pc" and now it keeps restarting with a blue screen saying the same thing.
Oh my god this was so simple, why are all the other guides so complicated? Thank you so much
Rufus does work well If you are trying to get through to "Windows Password" However if you are locked out at the HDD (hard drive) password that is set by the computer manufacturer, then you must call them to get the master password that is set on the "hard drive" when it was bought.
I am using this tool ever since as well. Always saved the user from depression :)
Great tool. I've been using a custom linux distro where I can just do it in a few clicks with a GUI. Sometimes the SAM file isn't in the right location and cmd line doesn't work right. I think it should be worth mentioning that if the drive is encrypted, you will fubar the entire thing by doing a SAM file related PW reset. You also cannot unlock accounts that use a Microsoft Account login with any tool that I've used/found.
It's funny you made this video today. I was tasked to install something on a work machine with lost admin password. I just booted Kali and used chntpw only to discover the only admin was the Administrator account.
We discovered that a previous staff was using Administrator as normal user with her personal Gmail logged in and League of Legends installation files in her download folder.
I removed quite a lot of things before proceeding
Work on imac
There is a "trick" you could do if all you have is a Windows install media (CD/DVD/USB/etc.).
Boot into that, then at the start screen press Shift-F10 to open the command prompt. Then you can rename the file d:\windows\system32\utilman.exe to something else temporarily, whatever you want - just so you can undo this later.
Copy d:\windows\system32\cmd.exe as a replacement to the above file. Then reboot the machine without the install media. When asked for login credentials, click the Utility Manager icon (should be bottom left). This now opens a command line window.
At which point you can use the NET USER command to rest passwords all you like. Add extra users, set them as administrator, whatever you please. No need to know any password.
Been a trick for a long while now, I know it worked in W7, and it still does in W10.
That's exactly the method I use. You can rename any of the Accessibility Tools to be replaced by cmd.exe. Also, later on cmd if you just use the command "net user" it will list all the available usernames, then you pick one and input "net user " and it will change/apply the to the . Sometimes it will output that you don't have permission for that, so you can use the Administrator account instead. Even after changing said account it might not show up, and that's because it's not active, so, again on cmd you input "net user administrator /active:yes" and that account will now show in the login window and you can log in with the password you gave it.
I used this too .. it was amazing trick and makes you look like hacker somehow 😂😂😂
One tip: if you run Windows 10, be sure to do a "complete" shutdown, by holding 'Shift' when you click on the Shutdown icon.
Apparently Windows 10 does some hybrid/partial shutdown by default.
Took a while to figure out why normally powering down wasn't doing the trick....
I had the exact same problem, it had a message that the Windows is hibernated and it failed. It took me some time to figure it out. I also hold the Shift key while shutting windows down and it worked!
Thank you mate!
I'm using this for more than 10 years.. great piece of tool
Yep..have used this for years, mainly when CD boot was popular, but now on USB is nice.
Chris - I see that you enabled the admin, while other login accounts were listed.. Was not this video about resetting forgotten passwords? Is the procedure the same for a regular account [such as Titus]? Will it function the same? thanks. dw
Brilliant guide, nice and clear and takes you through every step. More importantly its the only guide that actually worked after hours of searching! Thanks a lot.
Worked great. Had a locked out 'boot' drive and all the other tricks failed. This came right up and allowed me to reset the computer admin!
Thanks Chris, this was really handy to know as I've just "upgraded" my fairly old (2006 vintage) machine from Win7 to Win10. It became apparent that at some point I'd set a password for my default user account, and that I'd totally forgotten that I'd done that, and of course what the password was (I tried everything I could think of, but nothing worked).
Anyway, I followed your instructions and apart from a problem I had with the USB thumb drive I was using (it was one of those which converts an SD card to USB in an adapter), and used a "proper" one, it worked exactly as it should.
A possible side-effect was that the next time I ran MS Outlook, it seemed to have "forgotten" all the email passwords for my email accounts, and I've had to put them back into the config.
Assuming this is NOT a coincidence, I presume Outlook is using the same file for its email account password that the Windows account manager is using?
Thanks for your hard work, Chris, and I hope 2020 is a good year for you and yours.
This is why you should have a bios password to stop people booting from usb. Also this won't work if the drive has bitlocker enabled. Microsoft know the passwords can be easily reset which is why they advice you use bios passwords and encryption.
just pull the battery, reset bios
@@haydenborst6272 The battery is not for BIOS its for CMOS. But you will have a problem if your System/Mainboard uses NVRAM to store BIOS configuration parameters because there is no separate battery...its in the NVRAM module an you can not pull it out.
@@haydenborst6272 The bitlocker encrption is less easy to get around. This is why you do both.
Thanks! I just got this to work on an old Dell Optiplex (Vista) machine. It was a little different, and I had to go back a few times, but finally figured it out. It is easier than most other procedures I found, which most wouldn't work on Vista.
What a time saver! You sir have provided such an awesome service and I can't commend you enough! Now my mom can use her laptop again! Cheers to you!
Excellent Video, I used it for a computer at work that disconnected from the domain, i enabled the Administrator account reconnected it to the domain and logged in and then turned the Admin Off, Thans Chirs!!
Nice, no muss - no fuss. Also complies with my daytime employer/s, "no use of third party software" rule. One more usb drive to put in my quick fix stash. I'll have a rash of lockouts in the last week of August/first week of September and again from a week before Christmas until New Years Day. This will save me a lot of time.
Thank soooooooo much. You really saved me a lot. I joined my PC to a network and after some months, I had to change the account user name and password from the domain AD for my own reasons. After doing this successfully, I got this error "The trust relationship between this workstation and the primary domain failed " when I tried signing in using the new username and password so the only option was to unjoin it from the network and join it again BUT I had to first login with the local Administrator account which I did not Know and this stressed me a lot but you saved me. Thank You so much. God Bless you for sharing this.
Hoping this still works Chris, thank you so much for posting!
THIS WORKS YOUVE TRIED IT ?
awesome video...please do this type of video more often...very good for IT administrators
Linux is just as easy and even easier. Just launch into single use mode from grub and there you go. The only wait you can protect yourself is drive encryption.
bro, haven't seen this reset in a few years, I used on Hiran Utility CD, man great stuff, I was wondering what I did with that CD lol, thanks again.
2:20 is when the video actually starts
Thanks a lot helped a lot skipped a ton
Good job...
Didn't see how he created his new password. I know he wiped the password, but he typed a password when it logged back in. Didn't see him create it.
the program seems to hang at booting the kernal after hitting enter
I've used this before and can tell you that it works however I'm currently having this same issue with a clients PC. Was this ever resolved?
I really love this video teacher from now on will be following you alot
Windows Vista doesn't show user accounts in computer management. I did get it figured out from another video.
Also, Windows 7 Ultimate is a little different. To quit, type "!" instead of "q" to quit. Took me a few minutes to see that, as I was following this video.
Great video! Thanks for guiding me through the password reset.
freezes on
Booting the kernel.
what's wrong?
I posted an alternative that involves copying over the files to another computer, resetting then copy them back
Hi Chris, thanks for the video,
Following this i have a quick question to ask, how this is going to work if you have your hard drive encrypted (like is it in the most enterprises today)?
1. Step: Open cmd as system user
2. Step: Type 'net user username *' into cmd
@@bizzystradlin7751 no reason to scream at me with caps. It used to work
YO! I made a really old video on this exact stuff back in the xp days. Check it out. Even has the setup music. Microsoft did not claim it for some reason. ua-cam.com/video/xwjLqr65oM8/v-deo.html&t
@@bizzystradlin7751 sorry but this is still a thing and it does work, you either run on a system with a domain controller and your user has limited access to the command line or you did not open cmd as administrator, also obviously dont include the single quotes.
as that command is something i use a lot when i run my automated setup scripts at my job.
50k subs! Amazing!
Dvizz zzivD Hows that relevant to anything ? Lol... Btw, what distro do you use? (Assuming you use Linux)
Dvizz zzivD True, and thank you for your answer. I’m currently using Arch + Manjaro, and its awesome! Im never going back to Windows (unless it’s some type of a need)
Civil UA-cam Replies... Now I know this is a dream...
Thanks a million bro. You are the best! It did work. Now I just need to know if I can redo the account I forget the password for.
Thank You , needed this so much . I just had to put hard drive in another computer , could no access bios , to boot to usb . I was like 3 days later and like , why didn't I just slap the hard drive in other computer .
Forgot your password in MacOS? Press COMMAND+R at boot to enter recovery mode, open terminal and type "resetpassword" (no space or quotes). That simple!!!!
Thank you for the idea on how to reset the password. my case was Win 10 on Virtual Box, I had to use Hiren's Boot Cd and go to the settings of Virtual Box to add a new hard as IDE then map it with the image of Hiren's boot cd.
Hi Chris
I eventually got going but you may like to consider a few providoes.
My bios didn't support booting off the USB stick. No worries, I created a bootable CD using the iso file.
Unfortunately a used a Windows me laptop. Need Windows xp or above for the program to create the bootable stick.
Running the bootable CD worked I reached finding the partition where windows is. It reported that Windows was in hibernate mode and it would not mount the disk. Even asking to ignore this, it still didn't work. Going into Windows and asking to Shut Down did not help.
The way around this is when Windows starts up, press the power switch and force it to turn off. After a couple of times of doing this, you get the message repair. Go into options and select Power down PC. Swapping back to the bootable CD you now can mount the the partition.
Many thanks for your vidéo
Chris, I just installed a second SSD. While working on that (partitioning, mounting with fstab, changing permissions) I got this idea: the best protection against ransomware is to use encrypted partitions, the criminals can't encrypt it if you encrypted it yourself, right? Maybe you could look into that and do a video on it. How easy or difficult is it to set up Linux with full encryption for your partitions. Do you get any performance penalty? Is there any risk? How exactly does this encryption work (not the technical process of encryption but the usage of an encrypted system)?
You definitely can encrypt already encrypted files, i don't know if there is something on OS level that would prevent it, but you can put encryption on top encryption on ordinary files as many times as you want, provided the fact that decrypting them would become more painful the more encryption you have
If your encrypted volume is mounted, the ransomware can still encrypt your files. It's common for Linux distros to offer whole disk encryption as a simple checkbox option at install. I've had no trouble with this. With encryption acceleration built into modern CPUs, you shouldn't notice much if any performance impact.
So encryption doesn't offer any protection against ransomware. Bummer. Thanks for the explanation.
All right, my next attempt. Keeping the partition isolated from the external world with the exception of a particular service (Steam/Battlenet) but having full access to it on your local system. If that works then that would be a great video.
Don’t forget to make frequent backups. And test your backups.
@@mitchelvalentino1569 And as I one heard someone say, if you haven't tested your backup, you don't have a backup.
Thank you, help me a lot. You help to fix my computer, I could go through to my laptop even without the password.
This was very helpfull and compared to other solitions you find on youtube very easy! Thanx a lot! :-)
NIce trick. Unfortunately this will not work if you have secure boot properly setup and a bios password. But I believe that there are just so many security issues in windows that it does not matter anymore.
BTW I fully switched to linux on my thinkpad x230 as a daily driver for school with a windows vm for office and closed sourced stuff. Gonna make the switch on the desktop when I get a bit more powerful hardware and when the anti cheat stuff in games are fixed.
Cheers!
Just curious, but what distro did you switch to??
Ali Rahman despite all my failled attempts to install arch... I know I am a brainlet. I am using antergos. I was using Linux mint before that for almost a year. Then I checked out kde neon. Fell in love with kde. But neon was Debian based and I did not want that, so I just installed the plasma desktop on antergos. What about you? What distro are *you* using and if so, how did you end up on it?
Thanks Chris! Downloaded this video. EXCELLENT info!
Chris, I installed the game Life is Strange on Linux (an ext4-partition), the performance was not good so I installed it on Windows too. It seems that playing this game on Linux (probably with OpenGL) costs me around 30-50% FPS while using the same settings, to the point that it makes the game unplayable on Linux while it is pretty well playable on Windows with my hardware (i5-750 and HD 7850) even though there clearly is some stutter because of a CPU-bottleneck. On Windows I could put MSAA on 2x and still the FPS was a lot higher. It seems that this is not one of the games which works well on Linux, unfortunately. The game has native Linux support but the developer and/or AMD put a lot less effor in supporting OpenGL than in supporting DX9 and that is being shown by the system requirements on PCGamingWiki.
looks exactly like "Trinity", I've used for over a decade... worked on a Win10 box recently. it's old AF, meaning Winders never bothered to fix anything.
Will this work using a DVD instead of a usb?
Windows is hibernated, refused to mount. The system was properly shut down.Failed to mount sda4.
This tool works fine for local account but does it work for microsoft account as well?
Thank you so much for such a valuable video sir. I don't know words to thank you. But I only have a single problem. Is there any way to brute force the pins since we have only 10000 combinations? Password resetting didn't recover the pin for my case. Thank you so much again
After plugging in the usb to the locked computer, all you have to do is reset it? I tried that and nothing happened. I wen the boot menu and secure boot is on idk if that has something to do with it.
I have also used this for around 10 years. If has always worked. I've used others with graphical interfaces but they have never been as reliable.
Awesome method, but i think you confuse it a little. Anyone would go ahead and try to reset immediately the pass for the account used and not the admin account. It wdnt be a problem wd it? it seems the tut above it is for people with virus in the comp that needs clean up.
I teach my students the same technique as "benriful" from this thread do and it works like a charm.
All they need to do is to download Windows- 10 or Server 2012/16 R2 and Rufus to put the installation media on a USB drive.
It should work with any version but I haven't tried.
Boot windows installation CD or USB.
Then press Shift + F10 for a dos-prompt.
Run Diskpart to figure out the letter of your system drive.
X:\diskpart.exe
DISKPART> list volume
Mine was D:\ so I change to D:\ and navigate to system32
Exit the diskpart utility.
DISKPART> exit
X:\> d:
D:\> cd windows
D:\Windows> cd system32
Back up utilman.exe
D:\Windows\System32> copy utilman.exe utilmantemp.exe
Back up your cmd.exe just in case.
D:\Windows\System32> copy cmd.exe cmdtemp.exe
Remove utilman.exe
D:\Windows\System32> del utilman.exe
Let your cmd.exe masquerade as utilman.exe
D:\Windows\System32> rename cmd.exe utilman.exe
Remove cd/usb and reboot the computer
Klick the ease of access button on the login screen.
In the cmd window that opens type:
C:\Windows\System32> control userpasswords2
Remove or change the password on any user you want.
Exit the cmd prompt and log on to the computer with no or new password.
Now you should restore your files to their original state.
Restart and boot from install media again.
Press Shift + F10 for dos-prompt.
Navigate to your system disk and system32 to restore files.
Delete utilman.exe and replace it with the backup file.
D:\Windows\System32> del utilman.exe
D:\Windows\System32> rename utilmantemp.exe utilman.exe
Reboot and you're done!
I had problems breaking into domain locked computers with no local user but got around it using this technique in combination with rebooting in fail safe mode (Press F8), and then opening a cmd prompt to active the local administrator account using:
C:\Windows\System32> control userpasswords
After that I could disable the domain login and remove the domain administrator.
The domain administrator account wouldn't let me change password using "control userpasswords2" and didn't let me enabling the local administrator account using "control userpasswords" unless I boot into failsafe mode.
But beware. I had to change password on the domain administrator before deleting it to use the account when uninstalling a antivirus client and its firewall. My local administrator wasn't allowed to tamper with previously installed security applications.
The Windows reset password screen does not appear for me 4:49 point.
It looks extremely helpful.
I am struggling with Dell with Win 8.1.
Unfortunately the tool can't find the windows partition. Just the whole disk. With Macrium Reflect I can see all of the partitions including the one with windows.
Any tip?
loot at my recent post...
copy offline the following files to another computer, reset then put them back... (don't forget to back them up first by copying them into a backup folder or something)
c:\users\UserNameToBeReset\NTUSER.DAT
c:\Windows\System32\config\SYSTEM
c:\Windows\System32\config\SOFTWARE
c:\Windows\System32\config\SECURITY
c:\Windows\System32\config\SAM
c:\Windows\System32\config\DEFAULT
thanks chris youre a life saver as always
Is this working on EFI mode?
Bro when i in de admin account what is the next step to reset my personal account? I'm not seeing that step in your video
Net user [your account name] new password then hit enter
If it still holds true, when you reset a users password through this route you can lose access to any encrypted files the user may have had. Correct me if this has changed.
Will this also work for bios password NOTE BOOT TO USB DEFAULT NOT SET also Its 64 BIT
I've been using hirens boot CDs tool to do this with minixp interface for years till I realise that there was an updated version with win10 interface
Kyhi’s rescue disk is awesome as well
Does it still work on window 10 current builds?
Mine stops at 'booting the kernel' Any suggestions?
Me too... How'd you fix it?
I've been using this tool for ages. However, I recently tried it on a Lenovo laptop and it doesn't work. If the account has administrator privileges, you have to have to have the password to overwrite it.
Did you ever find a way to get past the password on the leveno?
Just indicate you have forgotten your password and/or pin. Microsoft will email or text (your choice) a code. Enter the code; reset your password; done. Easy! (You may have to re-type a string of characters to prove you are not a computer somewhere in the process.)
This is the best bacon saver ever!
I don't even know where to begin but I know I need help. Did I say please yet?
If "you" can I would be very grateful & will definitely go do a favor for someone too.
Probably the best advice is Buy New Computer.
Dell Dimension 4400 (oh hell yeh!)
When it "starts" it goes to windows can't start
Repair ( recommended)
Start Normally
If I choose Start Normally
It flashes the Windows 7 4 color graphic thing for an instant & revirt's to black screen w the symbol - upper left corner. From here even if I go F8 for list of start up options 3 safe modes last know point debugger that list I've tried all of them it always loops back to black screen.
If I choose repair it always says Sorry can't repair right? Send or don't send.
So if I expand the report window I guess it's called there's a link to Microsoft & if I put mouse over & right click & open I get to control panel? Window
Left side Library Recent places & Computer. Right?
So This Computer I bought used so it's not mine until now uh.....I found Windows 7 Start up Run as administrator & yeh it opens choose Lang Eng
Starts to install but gets To the 2nd sec. On progress bar...then tells me missing drivers ok so I literally opened every Every file on C drive but Noooooo.
In repair if I go to Advanced options It asks for Password & I don't know it. If I did maybe I could solve on my own. Ha! Mmmm... .oh yeh
I have 8 giga flash drive w/ windows 8 ( that's what I want to run) & Rufus.
Back at that window it always opens up to txt. Files but if I expand I can choose all files.oh boy....
There F: shows flash and contents.
Oh yeh on C: there's a X boot "partician" if that's what it's called. Nothing in there helps.
Got WiFi & an Android Motorola G3...
Tired of living............. .
In the past......but Newer comp. in OCTOBER.
Everything is fine it just be a lot cooler if I could get online with my wide screen keyboard mouse instead of watching my phone screen for internet.
I watched vid. About Android on Old PC too.
As long as I don't have to run XP or Vista or 7 I guess I don't care what OS I use..... I've never used anything past Win 7 so it's can only get better from here.
I live in Mexico & tech help is limited for me.
So this message is like a Radio Telescope Broadcasting in every direction as far as it can Go. But yeh sure I hope it will reach Intelligent Life & that the Intellegent Life Will Respond.
Is there anybody Out there?🤖👽🤓🤔
Iv'e done this for money in the past (With the tools in Kali). Pretty silly and simple, sure. But it's the same with most IT related things. Whats simple for one is hell for another. I feel a bit sorry for the clients some times when i'm sent out to install some stuff like games from the Microsoft store or set up email etc.
Thanks "Luftbubblan", appreciate your posts. UPDATE: 11-07-19 - After everything I tried failed to work, I came back to these posts and started reading them. I noticed a post by "Luftbubblan" about using the tools in Kali. It was one option I had not tried. Kali and the tools within it WORKED! Thanks "Luftbubblan", appreciate your posts.
Yep, worked great mate!
Man... Love your videos, you’re awesome ✌🏻
Wont resetting a password make personal data unusable (encrypted) ?
The data isn't encrypted unless you encrypted it.
What I mean is that the video doesn't show you resetting the password for Titus, which I would assume would be the account you'd want to reset.
That would be more direct, if you did not have administrator access. But if your administrator account is enabled, and you know the password, then your administrator account could reset passwords for other accounts.
In this video, he showed how to get administrator access, which once logged in, gives you access to do whatever else you decide to do.
The procedure for resetting the other logins would essentially be the same as what we watched for resetting the administrator account.
So, I got a computer today and had this very issue. Problem is, when I try to boot this thumb drive, I get a Kernel Panic message. So, it probably doesn't work on everything. Back to the search for a Windows 10 password hacker...
Will this work if Windows disk encryption is enabled?
Can't get it to work. no options will work and it just scrolls and stops at Kernal Panic Not sync
Totally just saved me! THANKS
I spoke too soon. Was able to open and get in as admin. Looks like the previous user loaded win 10 pro without activation. So one in it won't let me make user changes. Using your script, I noticed password not required has an X. Admin does not. The user pw is on "blank" but it ask for a pin or pw.
Trying to help a recent widow get in so she can take care of business.
Hi Chris. I just saw your video. I forgot my password, and I actually took the laptop to a tech place, and they were going to copy the data and put it back on, but the 32-bit encryption was somehow put on. Does this work even with that on? And if so, it won't delete my files, correct?
Am I right in saying, if this is an online account on windows 10 that tool won't work?
Worked like a charm, thanks
Does it delete the files of the user when you reset the pwd, like the same feature from on windows? By the way it still works with the last version 21H1?
I have used this successfully on a number of older machines, but I've tried it with a few new Windows 10 machines and it gets stuck at "botting kernel". I can't seem to find any information about how to get past that.
I posted an alternative that involves copying over the files to another computer, resetting then copy them back
hangs on "booting kernel." doh!
same here
Same here too
Same here has anybody gotten past this yet
Not certain about the points made but ,if anyone else wants to discover admin password recovery windows try Bablim Simple Code Booster(do a search on google ) ? Ive heard some unbelievable things about it and my work buddy got amazing results with it.
Make sure computer is restarted in windows properly then try again
trying this on windows 10 at the first option to boot, i hit enter and just get a kernel panic and its stuck... anyone have any suggestions? other methods have failed as well i'm at the point where it might be easier to rebuild.
Very helpful. liked and subscribed
very useful explanation
So what do you do for a VM system? Cause it is the VM systems that give us the most problems. A month or two ago I went to boot up my W10 VM system and much to my chagrin I realized I had forgotten the password. Granted I last used the password months or more ago but still. So your video says this solution doesn't work for VMs. What does work for VMs?
Weird, not working for me. I make all the changes, save the hive data, reboot, and i don't get the Administrator account, nor i can get into another account that i cleared the password. Everything stays the same.
I was like "bet this is pogostick" click show more "pogostick, yep"
Trying to reset a HP pavilion x360. It will not boot off the Flash drive I made following the instructions. Boot menu won't recognize it, and when i set it to boot in bios, It just will not boot. any thoughts would be appreciated.
Having a issue here, when plugging the USB into the locked computer it isnt booting up as yours. Also when trying to Boot via USB it doesn't appear. what am i doing wrong ?
I really appreciate your videos, I learn a lot, Thanks. You stated in this video "I've never seen it actually not work." Well, it's not working for me. I don't have either the Windows 8 recovery or original discs (this is a friends PC.) You don't mention changing to either UEFI Boot or Legacy boot. When I select UEFI Boot it WILL NOT boot with CD/DVD drive or USB drive. Legacy Boot will boot the CD/DVD drive and USB drive but the chntpwd program stops with the following line at top of screen: "Oops: 0002 [#1]" and last line on screen reads "Kernel Panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init! exitcode=0x00000009" and locks at that point. I tried all the Boot options listed with no change to last line. Unfortunately I never get to the default options to pick. Any ideas? Would appreciate any help.
UPDATE: 11-07-19 - After everything I tried failed to work, I came back to these posts and started reading them. I noticed a post by "Luftbubblan" about using the tools in Kali. It was one option I had not tried. Kali and the tools within it WORKED! Thanks "Luftbubblan", appreciate your posts.
I know this is an old vid, but using this info, I cannot get the laptop with the usb to start with the USB iso. There's a gap in the info for me. I have rufus on my PC, put the iso on the usb and plugged the usb into the laptop. it's an HP and hasn't been used in 3 years. no amount of restarting, getting into auto repair (diagnosing pc) has given me any sort of results. I cannot get to the cmd prompt because it goes to the user password to access that. Top it off, the laptop has partitions.. I don't know why but looks like 3 or more. C is boot, then there is X and I forget what the others were. And it won't boot from the usb still.
Does it work with a Bitlocker encrypted drive?
I have a old encrypted win installation partition which i forgot the password to..... even lost the encryption keys....
Still keeping it in hope i remember which password i used...
Answer in FAQ:
No luck for me :(
"I use full disk encryption, like Bitlocker, and even if I do remember the Bitlocker password I have forgotten the windows password
No support for encrypted disks, even if you know the password to open it.
Sorry. No plans to support it for the moment."
@Chris , thank you so much, this was amazing, very useful!!!
Thank you very much, This was helpful.
Hi Chris, I know this video has been posted more than 2 years, is there a way where in can edit the settings on every username?
Say I want to enable/disable "Passwd not required"
Just freezes on "booting the kernel". Might not be compatible with modern hardware? i7-8700k, Z390 mobo, RTX2080 Super
I tried a couple different videos before I found this one. Unfortunately, now the laptop I've been trying to reset password on is on a reboot loop. I downloaded the image in this video to a usb but now can't get the problem laptop to startup properly. Can you help?? Thank you in advance.
Why is it that you can't use this on a VM?
i did all of it and when i press -ctr alt del- it rebooted and said "your pc ran into a problem, we need to restart your pc" and now it keeps restarting with a blue screen saying the same thing.