Ever been locked out of your computer because you somehow managed to forget your password? Some say ha yeah right, but over time more and more people ask me what do I do if I’ve forgotten my password? Well there is a very useful trick to remember if you’ve done the unthinkable.
Depending on the operating system you’re running, there are a couple different ways to get around this. If you’re running Windows NT/2K/or XP there is a simple way to do so.
First you start by shutting down the computer all the way. Once the system is shutdown, start it up, and immediately begin to strike the F8 key. This will pull up Windows Advanced Boot Options, looking a little something like this….
From here you’re going to want to select the first option at the top, Safe Mode. Once the system is booted into Safe Mode, you will notice a new user account appears on the screen, possibly one you did not see before. This account will be called Administrator. Every Windows OS has an administrator account built in.
Log in as the administrator, and then from there you can go into the Control Panel > User Accounts and then remove the password from the other accounts. Restart your computer, and voila, your account previously blocked by a password can be logged into without one.
For those of you running Windows Vista, 7, or any other operating system, there are several resources online, you just have to search for them. A great Linux based password reset tool is called, “The Ultimate Boot CD.” This is a free download, but users’ beware, this should be used only by advanced users, because it takes you into the system’s registry where you could really damage your system if your not sure what your doing,
FYI – Try to use the same password with everything, so you don’t find yourself trying to remember several different passwords. If you come up with one or possibly even two or three, super solid, strong passwords with a variation of uppercase, lowercase, numbers, special characters, you probably can use those the rest of your life!!!
