6 Ways to Reset Forgotten Windows 10 Password

If you forgot Windows 10 admin password, you’ll be unable to install any software. Sometimes you won’t even be able to use your computer. Microsoft doesn’t make it easy to reset your password, but you have some options. In this tutorial we’ll show you 6 simple ways to reset forgotten Windows 10 password for administrator and Microsoft account. Rest assured, at least one way will help you out.

Method 1: Use Password Reset Disk

Using a password reset disk is Microsoft’s official method to reset a lost Windows password. The only downside of this method is that you need to create a Windows 10 password reset disk before your password is lost.

If you have created a password reset disk, you can easily set a new password for signing in to your Windows 10 computer. Check out this tutorial: How to Use a Password Reset Disk in Windows 10.

Method 2: Login with Other Sign-in Option

If you can still log into Windows 10 with PIN, picture password or another administrator account, there is a good chance you can open an elevated Command Prompt and reset Windows 10 password easily.

Simply press Windows logo key + X on your keyboard to open the Quick Access menu and click Command Prompt (Admin). To reset your forgotten password, type the following command and press Enter. Replace account_name and new_password with your username and desired password respectively.

Method 3: Reset Microsoft Account Password Online

Since Windows 8, most people are now using a Microsoft account for logging into Windows. When you forgot your Microsoft account password, just use another computer to visit the Windows Live password reset page on the Microsoft website, and you can reset the password online. It’s relatively easier than resetting local account password.

This method requires you to have access to the alternate email account or phone number you provided when signing up the Microsoft account. If you don’t have access to those anymore, Microsoft will be unable to verify your identity. In that case, you can convert Windows 10 Microsoft account to a local account from a boot media, so you can log back into Windows 10 without losing files.

Method 4: Reset Windows 10 Password with MSDaRT

DaRT (Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset) is a toolset from Microsoft that helps IT professionals recover the computers that have become unusable. Boot your computer with DaRT Recovery CD and then launch the built-in Locksmith Wizard tool, it allows you to reset Windows 10 password of any local account.

Unfortunately, DaRT is not free. This tool is only available for Microsoft volume customers, TechNet Plus subscribers, and MSDN subscribers. Before performing a Windows 10 password reset, check out this video tutorial on Microsoft website: Reset passwords with the DaRT

Method 5: Reset Windows 10 Password with PCUnlocker

PCUnlocker allows you to unlock any Windows computer that you were locked out by a forgotten password. It is a bootable image that can be written to a CD or a USB stick using the freeware ISO2Disc. After booting from PCUnlocker Live CD (or USB), you can view all local accounts for your Windows 10 installation.

Simply select one of your local accounts and click on Reset Password button, the program will check the status of your selected account and perform the following tasks to fix your password problem:

• Remove the password if your Windows account is password protected
• Switch associated Microsoft account to local account
• Promote your selected standard/limited user to administrator
• Activate the account if it’s disabled
• Unlock your locked account
• And much more.

Once you’ve reset Windows 10 password and get back into your system, make sure you set a new password that you won’t forget next time. It’s also good practice to create a Windows 10 password reset disk if you use quite complicated password for security reason.

Method 6: Restore Windows 10 to Previous State

If you don’t want to use any Windows 10 password reset software or your hard drive is encrypted with BitLocker, you can restore your computer to the most recent restore point includes an old password that you do remember. However, programs that have been installed since the restore point have to be installed again.

5 Best Ways to Find Lost Windows Passwords

Find lost passwords to Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7, etc.

The Windows log-on password is one of the most important passwords we have memorized and if you’ve lost this password, you’ll definitely be inconvenienced. Pick from one of several ways to find your lost password in Windows.

Most of the methods listed below to find lost passwords apply to Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows XP. Some of these ideas might work for older Windows operating systems as well.

Reset Your Microsoft Account Password

The quickest and easiest way to get back into Windows after losing your password is to reset it online—but only if you have Windows 10 or Windows 8 and only if you use a Microsoft account to log in. If that doesn’t describe your situation, move on to the next idea.

Since you use your Microsoft account as your Windows 10/8 credentials, and since Microsoft manages those accounts online, you can easily reset your lost Windows 10 or Windows 8 password from any browser, on any computer or device, including your smartphone.

Not sure if you log in to Windows with a Microsoft account? If you log in with an email address, then you’re using a Microsoft account. If you log in with something other than an email address, like your name or some other handle, then you’re using a local account and this method won’t work.

Use Your Password Reset Disk

If you don’t use Windows 10 or Windows 8, or do but log in with a local account, the easiest way to get out of a «lost Windows password» predicament is to use your password reset disk—assuming, of course, you have one. You’ll know if you do.

Creating a password reset disk, which is actually probably a flash drive and not an old fashioned floppy disk, is something you have to do before you lose your Windows password, not after.

You only have to make a password reset disk once. No matter how many times you change your password after creating the disk, it will still work to reset your lost password.

Have an Administrator Change Your Password

The next easiest way to find a lost Windows password is to forget the idea of finding it at all! Just have one of the other users on your computer change your lost password for you.

This will only work if one of the other people you share your computer with has a Windows log-on account that’s set up with administrator access. One account usually is, so give approach this a try with as many accounts as you can.

The first account that was set up in Windows is often times set up with administrator access.

Obviously, you’ll have to pass on this idea entirely if you’re the only user on your computer.

Reset Your Password From ‘Outside’ of Windows

If downloading unfamiliar software, burning discs, or creating flash drives doesn’t sound like things you’re interested in, try an unofficial, but workable, hack of the Ease of Access feature of Windows to gain access to the Command Prompt outside of a login session.

You’ll have to do a little command-line work but all you’ll need is access to your Windows installation or recovery media—and a little patience.

On the other hand, the automatic password reset and recovery tools are probably going to be faster solutions from start-to-finish for most of you, than using this method.

Clean Install Windows

This is the option you really don’t want to try but we include it here because it’s a certain fix for a Windows lost password problem.

A clean install of Windows is a complete erasure of your hard drive, followed by a reinstallation of the Windows operating system. We have some great step-by-step tutorials linked below but the clean install process is time-consuming and you lose everything in the process.

If you skipped the previous two ideas above because they sounded too complicated, please know that a clean install is much more involved.

10 best Windows 10 password recovery/reset tools

• If you happen to lose a Windows user password, there are password reset tools available to help you recover the account.
• Our recommendations include both free and paid options depending on your level of skill and needs.
• Check out our Password Recovery section in case you have issues with any of them.
• You should use one of the Data Recovery tools that we wrote about on the site.

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The nature of Windows 10 made passwords more important than ever. You basically cannot log in to your Windows 10 computer without entering a password (or without performing some tricks). And if you lost it, only Windows 10 password recovery tools can help you out.

When a password is required to log in to your machine, the worst thing that can possibly happen is to lose it.

If you lost your Windows login password, it seems like there’s no other solution than clean installing your system again. Well, that doesn’t have to be the case, if you look for a little help on the side.

In this article, we’re going to talk about various password cracking software or Windows 10 password recovery software if you like. These specialized tools can help you retrieve your Windows password quickly. In case you’ve lost it and you’re unable to log in to your computer.

But we must say, use this software on your own behalf, and only for personal purposes of recovering your lost password.

Please don’t use it to break into someone else’s computer, because you might get yourself into trouble.

What is the best password recovery software?

Passware Password Recovery Tool

Windows Key creates a bootable media that you can use on startup to recover your password.

The program is very simple to use, and it can even recover both local (standard version) and domain admin account (Enterprise edition only) passwords.

Passware Kit 2018 v1 is the latest updated version of Windows Key – the Anniversary Edition celebrating 20 years of activity.

This tool provides faster password recovery for TrueCrypt, Android, Zip, and many other types of files. decrypts Apple File System (APFS) disks and macOS High Sierra Keychains.

Regarding speed, GPU-accelerated password recovery is now up to 350% faster for TrueCrypt system partitions.

Windows Key comes in two variants: Standard $39.00, and Enterprise $295.00 USD.

However, you can use a free trial of the program to create a bootable media, but you won’t be able to recover any passwords until you pay for the full version.

There are ways to work around when the PIN is not working, but when you forget the password there’s more trouble to deal with.

Having a quick solution ready is quite handy. This tool showed to be the perfect solution to recover our lost password.

The best thing about this tool is that you don’t need to be an IT expert, everyone can handle it.

Passware

Stellar Password Recovery

When it comes to data recovery, you simply cannot go wrong with the most trusted software in the industry.

From memory cards to USB and RAW storage drivers, whatever the storage media, be it internal or external, you can easily retrieve your assets even if they were affected by corruption or malware infection with this amazing tool.

Powerful and reliable, the software is also incredibly easy to use – just launch the app and start scanning to retrieve your precious files.

Let’s quickly look at its key features:

• Recover data on RAW drive volumes (even inaccessible ones)
• Compatible with all Windows-based storage media and most popular file formats including photo and video
• Retrieve information from corruption-affected hard drives, formatted partitions, severe cases of data loss, and more
• Deen Scan and Quick Scan modes available
• Filters to easily sort the data that needs retrieving

Stellar Password Recovery

Windows Password Unlocker

One of the premium software on our list is Windows Password Unlocker. This tool also uses a bootable media to recover passwords on startup.

If for any reason you have any of the email passwords lost or unavailable, you can easily recover it in a snap with Password Unlocker Bundle.

What’s not so encouraging about this software is that it requires Professional or Enterprise versions to actually be able to retrieve any passwords, as the Standard version is only used for creating bootable media.

Windows Password Unlocker

Windows Password Reset Standard

Another premium software on our list is Windows Password Reset Standard.

This tool also deletes your password instead of recovering it, working similarly to previous options of this kind from the list.

However, Windows Password Reset Standard is a lot simpler than others, but it also comes with fewer options.

To start using Windows Password Reset Standard, just download an ISO file, mount it, and start resetting your password. Learn how to use ISO files from our guide.

As this tool comes with fewer features than Active Password Changer Professional, it is also available for the smaller price.

If you want to buy Windows Password Reset Standard, you can do so from this link, for the price of $19.95.

Active Password Changer Professional

Now, let’s find some time for premium password cracking tools for Windows 10, in case you want to try some of the commercial solutions.

When it comes to this category, there’s no better choice than Active Password Changer Professional.

It’s extremely easy to set up and use, which is good news for novice users.

If you are using Windows 7 you can recover your password with the tools from this article.

Active Password Changer Professional acts as a paid, but much simpler version of Offline NT Password & Registry Editor, so it deletes your password instead of recovering it.

So, if you want a simple yet powerful tool to delete your forgotten password almost immediately, Active Password Changer Professional is perhaps the best choice.

Unfortunately, you’ll need to pay to use it.

You can buy Active Password Changer Professional for the price of $49.95 from the link below.

Best free password recovery software for Windows 10

Ophcrack

By all charts and based on the experience of may users, Ophcrack is arguably the best Windows password recovery tool you can find.

It’s extremely effective, fast, and simple even for the first time users.

Run a System Scan to discover potential errors

This tool is so powerful that it doesn’t even require you to log in to Windows to be able to recover your password.

You just download the ISO image, mount it on a bootable media, and it will automatically recover your password when you boot your PC.

The program starts then locates your Windows (Microsoft) Account and begins the recovery process immediately.

According to tests, Ophcrac is able to recover your password in minutes. And it gets even better because Ophcrack is completely free!

So, if you want to download Ophcrack, you can grab it for free from the link below.

We also advise to create a strong password and manage your passwords safely. Check out Bitwarden from Windows 10 App Store to protect your passwords.

Offline NT Password & Registry Editor

Offline NT Password & Registry Editor is another password recovery tool for Windows.

In fact, this tool doesn’t recover your password. Instead, erases it completely so you can set up a new one normally (and remember it this time), which makes it a unique tool on our list.

It works similarly to Ophcrack: you download an ISO file, mount it to a bootable media, plug it in your computer, and the process can start.

It’s even faster than Ophcrack because usually, it resets a password immediately.

However, Offline NT Password & Registry Editor is not so easy to use for an average user, because it requires some command line work.

If you manage to get around, there’s no better password-deleting tool you can find.

If you’re interested in using this tool, check out our guide for deleting your Windows password with Offline NT Password & Registry Editor.

Offline NT Password & Registry Editor is available for free, and you can download it from the link below.

LCP is another free User Account password-recovering tool. But unlike the previous tools from the list, this one requires you to have access to a user account on a computer.

So, if you can’t access your user account, get back to one of the tools from above.

As for the program itself, it uses three methods of cracking your password: a dictionary attack, brute force attack, or a hybrid dictionary/brute force attack.

Each method has its own benefits but you’ll need some basic knowledge of the matter to be able to perform any of these actions.

LCP can use a lot of resources from your computer while recovering a password, so it is advisable that you don’t use your machine for anything else during the process.

Hash Suite

Hash Suite is a tool for advanced password crackers. This program’s purpose is to test the security of password hashes, and of course, crack them.

It offers deep analysis, reports, and statistics. Basically anything you need to manage your passwords and hashes.

It is extremely powerful and considered one of the fastest password crackers on the market. It has a simple design, and easy-to-use user interface only adds up to the functionality of this tool.

As we said, this tool is not for beginners because it requires employing a pwdump tool to gain the necessary hashes for Hash Suite to crack.

So, if you’re not familiar with these terms, it’s better to look for another option.

But if you know what you’re doing, check out the list of the possible pwdump tool here. If you want to download Hash Suite, you can do so for free from the link below.

John the Ripper

John the Ripper is a free program, technically, though it requires the special wordlists to discover passwords that, of course, are available for a certain price.

However, you might find some free wordlist alternatives that are compatible with John the Ripper, but we’re not sure how these will perform.

This tool is also aimed at advanced users, because it also uses a command-line environment, that average users will probably find hard to understand.

If you want to download John the Ripper, you can do so for free from the link below.

That’s it for our list of the best password recovery tools for Windows 10 .

As you can see, all these programs are different in terms of power, usability, recovery methods, price, and more. So if you know exactly what you want, you can pick up a tool based on your needs.

In order to avoid situations where you need to recover your Windows 10 password, we recommend you to use a good password manager.

It will not only help you manage your passwords, but it will also let you know when one of them is weak.

If you have one of the most often encountered problems – Windows password cannot be typed, just check our guide and fix it.

Also, if your problem refers to a lost email account, here are the best software choices for email password recovery.

Do you agree with our list? Or you have some other software to add? Tell us in the comments section below.

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All the recommendations made in the article will work in these scenarios as well:

• windows 10 password recovery tool – A reset tool is also known as a recovery tool.
• password finder windows 10 – Users need to find their lost passwords, so a password reset tool will do the job.
• windows 10 administrator password tool – If there are no other admins that can reset the password for you, you can do it all alone with one of the tools.
• windows 10 password cracker – Sometimes these tools are referred to as password crackers since they might be used by illegitimate users.
• windows 10 password remover – While you can’t permanently remove the password, you can replace it with a new one.
• windows 10 password reset usb free download – Most of the free tools recommended are installed on a USB that you boot up from.