Reset forgotten Windows Vista password without formatting
I recently happened to mistype the password when trying to set a password on my Windows Vista machine. As a result, I could not login to my computer after restarting it.
I was sure there was a way to “hack” into Vista without having to re-format my PC, and neither was I interested in downloading any software which claimed to reset forgotten passwords. Some amount of googling and I was “in” and ready to post this as a “tutorial” from my Vista machine 🙂
Here is what I did (find a geek to do this for you):
1. Boot your computer from a Linux Live CD (eg. Knoppix, Ubuntu etc.)
2. Open the “terminal” and type in the following series of commands:
sudo su – (gain superuser privelages)
cd /mnt (change directory to mounted drives)
ls (get the list of mounted drives)
cd sda1 (sda1 is the main hard drive)
cd Windows/ (change to the windows directory)
cd System32/ (change to the system directory)
mv Utilman.exe Utilman.old (backup original file)
cp cmd.exe Utilman.exe (copy cmd.exe as utilman.exe)
reboot
Now take out your Live CD and let Windows boot normally.
Once rebooted, on the Vista logon screen, Press Windows key + U (or click on the small Accessibility Options icon on the bottom left)
This will try to invoke Utility Manager (Utilman.exe) but cmd.exe will spawn instead, with ‘System’ privileges.
c:>net user mynewuser mynewpassword /add
c:>net localgroup administrators mynewuser /add
Reboot the system.
Now on the Login screen, you will see a new account “mynewuser” created. Login to Vista using the password “mynewpassword”
Now, go to Control Panel > User Accounts and remove the password for your original account. Reboot and login from your original Vista account and remove the “mynewuser” account you created for this hack (optional).
You can now (optionally) revert back Utilman.old to Utilman.exe to prevent misuse, incase a non-geek gets hold of your laptop 😉
Geeks are sexy!
P.S. You’ll find this trick on many other websites too, but the reason I “re-blogged” it is because it really works!
Hi and thanks for the info ..
Hopefully you can assist with my problem …
Currently have my late brother’s Z61T which has partitioned XP, vista and SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 as well as a Linus (failsafe).
He was a very lovable geek with paranoid security.
Have been using the XP as aware of that login password but recently XP fails to load either normally or in any safe mode – Am able to access the safe mode option however continues to remain on the blue ‘windows is starting’ screen without any further progression.
I am unable to load VISTA or Linux as password protected and as yet have not been able to crack his hints.
Will your method allow access to Vista without damaging the XP files to allow some type of restoration?
Ive performed a hard drive diagnosis from the BIOS which appears OK. Also have tried The Thinkpad restore and recovery tho i really dont know what im doing.
As for the failsafe Linux screen .. it may as well be in a different language.
My computer knowledge stopped with Windows 98 so please be gentle 🙂
Any assistance would be appreciated.
Regards, Monica
Hi and thanks for the info ..Hopefully you can assist with my problem …Currently have my late brother’s Z61T which has partitioned XP, vista and SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 as well as a Linus (failsafe).He was a very lovable geek with paranoid security.Have been using the XP as aware of that login password but recently XP fails to load either normally or in any safe mode – Am able to access the safe mode option however continues to remain on the blue ‘windows is starting’ screen without any further progression.I am unable to load VISTA or Linux as password protected and as yet have not been able to crack his hints.Will your method allow access to Vista without damaging the XP files to allow some type of restoration?Ive performed a hard drive diagnosis from the BIOS which appears OK. Also have tried The Thinkpad restore and recovery tho i really dont know what im doing.As for the failsafe Linux screen .. it may as well be in a different language.My computer knowledge stopped with Windows 98 so please be gentle :-)Any assistance would be appreciated.Regards, Monica
If you lost windows password. I think the best solution is making a windows password recovery disk with the third part utility. The disk works perfectly to recover windows password to “Blank”. It is also useful for administrator password recovery, you can wrote it to an blank CD or USB flash drive to recover administrator password. Booting up and clearing a password takes a minute or two works like a charm.
If you lost windows password. I think the best solution is making a windows password recovery disk with the third part utility. The disk works perfectly to recover windows password to “Blank”. It is also useful for administrator password recovery, you can wrote it to an blank CD or USB flash drive to recover administrator password. Booting up and clearing a password takes a minute or two works like a charm.