Windows 2000, XP, Vista and 7
Before all
Clean shutdown, for this trick to work, Windows must be shut down properly otherwise the changes will not be saved.
No encryption, there are few users that use Windows encryption, however if that's your case, you have to know that all your encrypted files will become unreachable if you reset your password.
Bootable CD, you must download and burn Offline NT Password & Registry Editor, which is freely available on Internet in
ISO format. You also need to know
how to boot a bootable CD.
Your glasses, because this tool displays many small prints throughout the process! But hey, your job will almost only be to press the Enter key more than 10 times.
- Boot the bootable CD of Offline NT Password & Registry Editor.
- A black screen appears with white text, type the Enter key to boot normally.
- Under Candidate Windows partitions are shown all installed Windows systems in a numbered list. Type the number of the Windows you want to work on and press Enter.
- Press Enter to let the CD automatically find the registry path.
- Press Enter to do a Password reset.
- Press Enter to choose Edit user data and passwords.
- The users list with their RID is shown, type the username (respecting uppercases) or its RID with 0x as a prefix, for example 0x01f4. Then press the Enter key.
- Type 1 number and press Enter to choose Clean (blank) user password.
- Type q letter and press Enter to quit.
- Type y letter and press Enter to save the changes, if you forget that tiny detail, it as if you've done nothing!!
- Presse Enter to confirm that you want to quit.
- Use CTRL + ALT + Del to restart.