Get Into Windows Accounts Without Passwords

You lose your Windows password(s) and cannot log in to your machine. If you have a rescue disk, you should be okay. If not, you might have to turn to Linux for help.

The method that I describe in this tutorial can work with a Windows machine that either dual boots with Linux or does not.

If the machine in question does not dual boot, you will need to download a live edition of a Kali Linux distribution and burn that ISO image to a disk (you could also use a Linux distribution on a USB drive). Either way, you will need to boot into Linux to recover your password.

So let's Begin ;)

Step 1: Boot in to Linux. Put the burned disk in the drive (or boot from USB) and boot in to the Live edition of Linux. You should use the standard Live Version. I have here used Kali Linux For Testing ;)

Step 2: Open the file manager of the OS and Browse for windows partition. In my case it was 157GB Volume. (You can browse all the volumes available to find yours windows partition)

Step 3: Change into the directory containing Windows  /PATH/TO/WINDOWS (PATH/TO/WINDOWS is the complete directory path to your Windows drive).

Right click on the windows partition or anywhere in the explorer (after opening the windows partition) to get drive direclty into terminal :)

Step 4: Change into the Windows/System32/config directory by issuing the cammand

   cd Windows/System32/config

3. Issue the command

 sudo chntpw SAM .

You should now see the chntpw screen, here you have six options:

1. Clear (Blank) user password
2. Unlock and Enable the user account
3. Promote user (make user an administrator)
4. Add user to a group
5. Remove user from the group
6. Quit

You do not want to make changes here, because this could wipe all users' passwords
Make sure you are working with a specific user.

Enter "q" for quit. We're going to make sure we are working with a specific user.

To list out all users in the SAM file, issue the command

sudo chntpw -l SAM

This will list out all of the users on the system. You can see here are 3 users in the picture
This listing will also tell you how many failed login attempts have been made.

To work with a specific user, issue the command

sudo chntpw -u "USER NAME" SAM (USER NAME is the actual username).

 If the username is only one word, you will not need the quotes. If the username is a full name, place it within quotes or the command will not work.

Once you are back in the edit screen, do the following:
1. Enter the edit screen for the specific user.
2. Type "2" (no quotes).
3. Hit Enter.
4. Type "y" (no quotes).
5. Hit the Enter key.
6. Type "y" (no quotes) followed by Enter to write the file.

At this point the user account should have no password. You can reset the password once you successfully log in to Windows.

Your Windows User password should be changed. Reboot into Windows to make sure the edit worked. If it did not work, again go through the steps once again and save the SAM file before quiting the chntpw.

Hope You have Enjoyed the post ;)

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