How to Reset Forgotten Password on Windows

A Windows Server runs entire services to organize, control, manage, and administrate clients, machines, data storage, and everything across the network. One of the most important things in a Server and even simple Windows is security. Here’s how to Reset the Forgotten Password of Windows Server 2019.

A password is the most basic security for a Windows whether a simple Windows or Windows Server. But that could be really hard to remember when you have different passwords across all of your accounts. If you don’t use a password manager, you will easily get out of control of the whole services, clients, and directory. Don’t worry, sit back and relax, because thankfully, it’s pretty easy to do and you won’t lose a single file or settings of your computer. It’s worth knowing that this method works for every Windows version including Windows Server versions.

There are many ways to reset the password on your Windows server, in this article, we give 2 simplest and most effective ways

Method 1: Use the command prompt

Start by plugging in/mounting the Windows installation USB/CD and restarting your computer in installation mode.

1. When the Windows Setup screen appears:

2. Press Shift + F10 to open the Command Prompt window.

3. For most of us, the d:/ drive is the Windows root directory, since c:/ is system reserved, however, in some cases, it can be c:/ drive

you may want to do the command c: press enter then dir to see the contents and make sure your Windows folder is in c: or d:

Navigate to the system32 folder type cd /windows\system32 and hit Enter.

 

4. Type the following commands, and press Enter after each command.

ren utilman.exe utilman.exe.bak 
ren cmd.exe utilman.exe

Explain the above 2 commands:

• ren Utilman.exe Utilman.exe.bak : Rename the Utilman.exe file to Utilman.exe.bak
• ren cmd.exe utilman.exe : Rename the cmd.exe file to utilman.exe

Type the following command to restart the computer normally and press Enter:

wpeutil reboot

Once Windows has rebooted and you are at the login screen, click on the Ease of Access button (or press the Windows Key + U) and it should open a Command Prompt

5. Type the following commands to change the Administrator password:

net user Administrator yournewpassword

Note: in the above command Greencloud123 is the new password, you can change it as you like.

Once complete, close the Command Prompt and log in your Administrator account with the new password

So now you have completed the password reset step, and you can log in to Windows. However, we have a problem the next time you enter the login screen, you or someone else can also open the Command Prompt window to use the above command again and reset the password. So what you need to do is restart your computer and repeat the above steps to enter the Windows Setup screen again. In the Command Prompt window, type the following command:

d:
cd windows/system32
ren utilman.exe cmd.exe
ren utilman.exe.bak utilman.exe

• ren utilman.exe cmd.exe: Proceed to rename the file Utilman.exe (this file is the cmd.exe file that I changed to Utilman.exe in the previous step)to cmd.exe
• ren utilman.exe.bak utilman.exe : Rename the file Utiman.exe.bak (This file is the original Utiman.exe file that we changed to the old file) to file Utilman.exe

Type the following command to disable the Administrator account and press Enter:

net user Administrator /active:no

The purpose of this is so that when you enter the login screen, you will no longer be able to start the Command Prompt file. Then type the following command to restart the computer normally and press Enter:

wpeutil reboot

This should restore the original functionality of the Ease of Access utility.

Method 2: Use Registry Editor

Start by plugging in/mounting the Windows installation USB/CD and restarting your computer in installation mode.

1. When the Windows Setup screen appears:

2. Press Shift + F10 to open the Command Prompt window.

3. On the Command Prompt window, type regedit and press Enter to open Registry Editor.

On the Registry Editor window, find the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE key in the list on the left pane.

4. After selecting the key, on the command menu, select File => Load Hive…

Next, on the Load Hive dialog box, select the file: DRIVE:\Windows\System32\config\SYSTEM

Note: Replace DRIVE with the name of the drive where Windows is installed, usually drive D

5. Enter any name you want for the Hive you are loading. For example 111.

Navigate by key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\111\Setup

Edit the cmd line parameter and set it to cmd.exe.

Change the value of the SetupType DWORD parameter to 2.

6. Next on the Registry window, select key 111 in the left pane list and select File => Unload hive.

Close Registry Editor and all open windows again. Your Windows computer will now restart. The screen will now look like the image below:

Type the following commands to change the Administrator password:

net user Administrator yournewpassword

Once complete, close the Command Prompt and log in your Administrator account with the new password

7. Type regedit to open Registry Editor.

On the Registry window, navigate to the key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\Setup

Edit the cmdline parameter and set the value to blank. Change the value of the SetupType DWORD parameter to 0 to restore the file settings to their original state.

Close the Registry Editor window and the Command Prompt window to continue. Windows will now restart. Once the boot process is complete, you can use the password you just set to log in to your Windows computer.

Conclusion

That’s all there is to it! Using 2 methods you can easily reset the local admin password for the standalone server, or change the forgotten domain admin password on a domain controller. The drawback of resetting the password is that you’ll be unable to access EFS files any longer.

Good Luck!