Sunday, July 25, 2010

How to reset Windows admin password without knowing the old password

Here is a simple tutorial on resetting the admin account password of any Windows Operating System.  All you will require for this is one Ubuntu live CD.
  1. Insert Ubuntu Live CD and boot from it.
  2. Open terminal and install chntpw in Ubuntu. To do so use the following commands.
    sudo apt-get update
    sudo apt-get install chntpw
  3. Now mount your Windows volume. In my case it was dev/sda1. Replace it with yours.
    sudo mkdir /media/WINDOWS
    sudo mount /dev/sda1 /media/WINDOWS
  4. Now navigate to the Windows configuration folder.
    cd /media/WINDOWS/WINDOWS/system32/config/
  5. To reset the administrator password enter
    sudo chntpw SAM
  6. After completing this command you will see 5 different choices. Select the 1st one and press Enter and done.


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