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5 Steps to Reset password in Windows

Updated 2 min read AVANETCO

Reset password in Windows
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A well-known saying among sysadmins points to the problem we are covering today, how to reset password in Windows: when someone has local access to a computer, there is a 99.999 percent chance they can take ownership of that machine.

Note that you reset a password in Windows only when you do not know the current password. If you know your password, check out our post on changing password in windows.

You can reset password in Windows on two types of system: a physical server or a virtual machine.

  • When Windows is installed on a physical server, you either access it directly and connect a USB drive with the ISO, or use KVM & ILO to mount the ISO.

Reset password in Windows

  • If you have a VM, mount the ISO on the CD-ROM drive and reboot the server. If a physical server does not load into repair mode, press F8 or F10 while it boots. On a VM, edit the settings as follows:

Reset password in Windows

  • Once the ISO is loading, press Shift+F10 to open the command prompt in repair mode and type the commands below. C is the drive where Windows is installed.
C:
cd Windows\System32
ren Utilman.exe Utilman.exe.original
copy cmd.exe Utilman.exe
shutdown -r -t 0
  • Reboot the server normally and click Ease of Access to open cmd, then run the command below with your preferred password. In Windows 2019 there is a slight difference: use alt+ctrl_del to open the utility manager.
net user Administrator xxxxxx
  • Then log in, delete Utilman.exe in this path: C:\Windows\System32, and rename Utilman.exe.original to Utilman.exe.

Now you know the steps to reset password in Windows. Save this post; it may come in handy one day.

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