Recovering lost password from a Windows system

In a Windows system, an administrator or the holder of administrator account can access any other system in the organization. For this purpose, the administrator uses a password known as admin password. Using this password, an administrator can reset the passwords of other Windows users as well. Windows stores this password in its registry-based file called SAM (Security Accounts Manager). It is a database that is located at %SystemRoot%\System32\Config folder. All said and done, sometimes it may happen that you forget the admin password. Because of this, you are unable to access the system that makes valuable data inaccessible. In such cases, you should try all sorts of techniques that you can, to remember or regain the forgotten password. However, if you are not able to do so, then you should use a third-party Windows Password recovery software to recover the Windows password.

Consider a scenario wherein you forgot the administrator password for your computer system. You recently changed the password as you were prompted to do so. You have used the earlier password for quite a long time and remember that password only. You try all sorts of permutations and combinations for the password but to no avail. You desperately need to get the password to retrieve all your vital data.

In the given scenario, there are few things that you can do such as:

Try to recollect the password as hard as you can. I know you must have done that a lot of times but give it a try one last time.
It may be possible that you may have not assigned any password to the user account. So, leave the Password field blank and press 'Enter'.
Do check if any other user has got the administrative rights for your computer. If yes, then allow that person to unlock the system for you.
As a last resort, you can also consider reinstalling Windows operating system. However, that would make you lose the data that you may not otherwise lose if you have the password.

However, if the aforementioned methods are not able to resolve the issue then you should use a third-party password recovery software to do the needful for you. Such tools are capable of either recovering the password for you or putting a blank password for the same.

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Using password recovery software when Password Reset Disk is unable to recover password

We know that our brain can remember a lot of things, but provided one keeps on reminding it. For example, lot of us remember certain dates like birthday, anniversaries, etc because we need to put these dates in lot of places like admission forms, email registration, etc. On the contrary, the things or tasks that we do not perform on a regular basis tend to slip out of our minds. The passwords of some our user accounts fall in such situations. A lot of us keep a system password for their computers, which we sometimes forget if we have not used it for long or if we have recently changed it. There are some methods that you can use to recover the system password. However, if you are not able to recover Windows password then you should use a password recovery software to do the needful.

There could be following reasons as well because of which you would need a password recovery software:

• You are unable to recall the password of Windows user account, chat messenger, or email account, etc.
• A particular user in your organization has left and you need to unlock and access the computer system.
• You have lost the sheet of paper in which the password was written.
• You have accidentally deleted the file in which the password was saved.

To ward off such instances in the future, you should create a Password Reset Disk, which enables you to keep a new password for Windows logon. To do this, you should perform the following steps:

• Open User Accounts by following Start | Control Panel | User Accounts.
• Select the user whose account you want to modify.
• Click the Prevent a forgotten password option under Related Tasks, and click Next.
• Insert a removable media such as a floppy disk, and click Next.
• In the Current user account password text box, enter the password that you want to keep, and click Next.
• When the progress gets completed, then click Next and then click Finish. You can use this disk to recover the forgotten password.

However, there may be chances when you are unable to recover Windows password because of any reason. In such cases, you should use a password recovery software to perform password recovery. Such tools reset the Windows password to a blank password.

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