Tech Tip: How to Change or Reset your Windows Account Password (2000/XP/Vista)
Before you put this tip to test, please make sure you know how to:
- Burn a CD Image (.iso file)
- Boot from your CD/DVD Drive
- Think of an excuse for resetting your gf’s password
Pictured is the bios page for changing the boot sequence of my crap ass pc (that I only spend time with 2 months a year).
Your bios will probably look different than the one pictured above, if they looked the same then you should consider upgrading.
OK MOVING ON……
So apparently you need to reset or change your windows account password because…
- You magically forgotten about your password
- Your gf is locking your pc because you are spending too much time on it
- You woke up 10 years into the future from your frozen sleep, not knowing who you really are and the only clues are buried within your password-locked pc
Fret not chumps. I have tested this method on both XP and Vista installations and it worked fine.
Sure, there are other methods out there that can help you reset your password, but I feel those take too many steps to achieve the same goal.
Also, some methods require you to be LOGGED IN to reset/change your password. Those methods will be totally useless when you can’t even access the computer.
***
So, are you ready!?
First, download Trinity Rescue Kit (TRK) from
http://trinityhome.org/Home/index.php?wpid=5&front_id=12
Or click here to download version 3.2
Burn it to a CD or DVD.
Reboot your PC and boot from your TRK. You should see a bunch of texts on your screen - Don’t panic! If you’re a linux savvy dude then operating TRK is a piece of cake for you.
After TRK is fully loaded, you will be shown a “command prompt” and this is where the fun begins. Here you need to know which account that exists in your Windows installation that you wish to hack. If you don’t know the account username then your best bet is to reset the password for Administrator.
EDIT: You can execute “winpass -l” to find out the list of usernames in your Windows installation!
The account username can be found out by running Task Manager and looking at the list of processes. Your account username should be there in the user column. But then again, you’re probably locked out of your account so you won’t be able to find out your account username ;D
Now, let’s try to reset/change your account’s password.
type “winpass -u Administrator”
OR
“winpass -u [your account username]” (without the quotes and brackets)
TRK will then proceed to search for the installations that exist in your PC. When you’re prompted just type the number of the windows installation. If you only have one installation like I do in the picture above, don’t bother typing in anything, just hit enter and it should do the trick.
You will then be prompted if you want to disable SYSKEY. I have no f**king idea what’s that but TRK assures you there’s no need to do so and even warns you that if you turn it off in Windows 2000 then you could be in deep shit.
Just hit enter with nothing keyed in and move on.
Boom! TRK asks you to enter a new password. But in most cases the best way to hack into an account is to reset the password. To reset the password, just type * (this is an asterisk A.K.A SHIFT+8) and hit enter.
TRK does its shit and the password should be RESET! Reboot your PC and see if the trick worked!
To reboot, just type reboot and hit enter or you can be old fashion and hit the reset button. Make sure you remember to eject your TRK cd/dvd before you boot into Windows.
Till the next tech tip, I hope you found much use with this one. ;)
P/S: I hold no responsibility if your PC decides to explode. Please state your gender in comments before you ask for help (Just kidding!)
Your screenshots are horrible copper!
Yes I am aware of that. The best image capturing device I have here in Malaysia is only my cameraphone.
Hi;
when you say to use for a user name not an administrator change to type
winpass -u [your account username]
do you mean Without the Square brackets as well as I have tried both and they dont’ seem to work and i konw you said dont’ use the ” but what about the [ ]?
I only want to change a user Not and admin password. thanks for you help :)
Hi Nic,
Yes, without the square brackets. i.e. winpass -u nic.
You need to know the correct username. For instance, if your account owner is Matt Daemon, it doesn’t mean you execute winpass -u Matt Daemon.
The username is one word. It could be mattdaemon for the example above.
Also, do you have more than one Windows installation on the pc? i.e. do you dual boot XP and Vista?
Hope that helps :)
HI tzechuen;
Thanks for your reply and help. No that machine only has Vista home basic edition on it there is no Dual boot system. We decided to go to XP and try them as if it was badly mucked up it wouldnt’ be as awful so we are trying it out now on XP professional and we have finally got the winpass-u username working but have spent over 7 hours today and a few hours last night trying to change the administrators password on XP. we have tried so many variations ( and with the new version of trinity it doesn’t seem to ask the same questions as your instructions above so it’s a bit confusing) but we have tried (as say if the Administrator was called waffles for example) we have tried
winpass -u Adminstrator (as you have written above)
winpass -a Adminstrator ( that just seemed to give a whole lot of confusing choices so we backed right away and out of that)
winpass -u waffles
winpass -uwaffles
winpass - * (just to try to getit)
winpass *
winpass -a waffles
winpass -u Admin
and nothing seems to work to get into the Administrators password to change it netiher of us can work out what we are doing wrong we have tried with and without spaces etc and i thought after the winpass -u username ( as we created another user account to test it on and get it working before trying for the Administrators one. But nothing we do is getting us in and at the closest at the end it always says no change if we get that far. Do you have any procedure steps that i can use to change the Administrators account for version 3.3.10? (it seems to be different than the steps above, it gives different answers in places etc) and nothing seems to be working for the Adminstrators Account and we are less scared of getting locked out of the XP (as it doesn’t have as vital information on it as the Vista the the password is lost on) so we are still trying now after being on all afternoon trying. Thanks for the reply and any steps of procedure for help would be very much appreicated as we are new to both the trinity, winpass and Vista.thank you :) Nic
P.s
I did try to look up any documentation to find out how to use and procedure in case the new one (as it seems from their forum there was a 3.2 version popular etc) but i can’t see any of the help subjects listed in teh drop down they seem to be empty . so your help would be very much appreciated as i dont’ understand most of the forum talk there and none of it seems directed at the steps. i think that’s as maybe these pages did have directions on them? we are too new with this program to know but we can’t see any there for new peopele or procedures etc only the headings.
http://trinityhome.org/Home/index.php?wpid=58&front_id=12
Ta again for your reply.
Hi Nic,
Have you tried winpass -l to list all usernames? Forgot to mention this in my guide, now that I remember it the first time I used TRK I had to execute winpass -l to find out the correct username.
Try that and let me know if it works. :)
sorry for taking so long to reply. I couldn’t get to a computer to get on the net until tonight. we did try once to do a winpass -l ( that’s as in L isn’t it? ) but wasn’t sure of what the resulting information really was.
so went to the Task Manager when signed in and went to USER to see who it said it was for the account and used that name but still no luck.
Have we used the wrong letter should it be an I insted of an l or a 1 perhaps?
thanks again for replying.
Hi Nic,
Hmmm, if possible take a picture of the winpass -l results and paste here. Also, I realised that you have typo’s for Administrator. Cheers.
(thanks for noting the typo for Administrator but it was just a typo in the email post :)
well we have no way of taking a photo of the screen unfortunately so I will try and summerize the results here after doing winpass -l
(we got the same choices and lists as before with the list names of0 (ohh and using as above the eg name of waffles for the administrator here) this is the list .
Administrator
waffles
(the guest is disables/off like the help is also )
we tried (with and without spaces the below)
winpass -uAdministrator
winpass - uAdministrator
winpass -Administrator
winpass -uwaffles
winpass - uwaffles
(have also tried shortening the word to just Admin)
it still does the same thing it gets to the end says it’s changed and says SAM OK then we type reboot and the Tosiba gives exactly 30 beeps and you still have to type a password into the computer to get it to go into XP.
The only thing I don’t understand is that this is set up with waffles as the Administrator so it is odd that there is two account names there ( but maybe that is normal) Anyway the end result is you can’t get into either named account ( even though I was slightly surprised to see 2 account names as I thought only one as the waffles account is definately set up as the Administrator account and is not a guest account or another user account. so I am not sure what is going wrong there. Unless it’s something that Toshiba’s just don’t like or something. Thanks for your reply.
I forgot to mention we tried to make another new user account again with the name ‘test’ and used the
winpass - utest
command and got the same result at the end
changed etc…
SAM ok
typed reboot and once again that did work so it’s definitely something with the administrator as that waffles is the name that was put in as the administrator and neither using the waffles or the Administrator commands work.
(forgot to put that in that last post :)
Hi Nic,
Did you enter an asterisk (*) as the password when you were in TRK? and did you try to just login with a blank password?
Also, did you try to just try changing the password to something and login with that password? Cheers.
Also, I believe all windows installations come with an Administrator account whether or not if you’re own account has admin power. :)
Hi
Yes we did use an asterix.
and we did make another account and tried to log in with that password and it works with a -user but not with the admin.
thanks for the info about the 2 ‘admin’ accounts i couldn’t work that one out and neither could the person on who’s machine it is trying to be used on.
It could also be i am starting to think more and more some Toshiba thing as i can’t work out why it would beep 30 times on start up when trying that. As it doesn’t do it when the -user account (new mock one made up) is used only when trying to do the admin . So maybe the Toshiba’s just don’t like it for some reason maybe ?
sorry about the typos’ in that last post . it’s a bit late over here :))
Hi Nic,
I’m running out of ideas now but it’s possible that your Windows installation is custom made by Toshiba. That’s all I could think of. Have you got another computer that’s not Toshiba to try hacking on? Cheers.
HI tzechuen ;
Thanks for your reply. Unfortunately there isn’t another computer to try as i am suspecting the Toshiba as being disagreeble at present . So until i can find another comptuer to try it in it looks like we have come to a brick wall. Thanks for all your time and effort and replies.
And if we figure out a way to make it work in the Toshiba or try on another machine and all is well I will post the results to you.
Thanks again for all your time and effort
Nic :)
“Your gf is locking your pc because you are spending too much time on it”
so this allows you to hax a computer pw? :O
… hm! jo has never told me his comp pw and I wonder why.
boys stuff can be irritating to the girls eyes ;)