Saturday, May 2, 2009

How to Change a Windows XP Lost Password

So, Lost your Windows XP password, have you? Or much, MUCH worse, you lost the password to your main Computer Administrator! Don't worry- I'll tell you what to do!

1. Before anything else, if you have lost the password of a regular user, ask the computer administrator. If the computer administrator isn't available at the time, you can do the next best thing. Note that you'll have to use the command window.
2. If you CAN log on to another account, skip to step 4. If not, go to the next step.
3. You have to reboot your computer. However, press F8 before it has completely booted, so another black screen shows up. In that black screen, use the arrows up and down to scroll options, the option you want to choose is: "Safe Mode with Command Prompt". Press enter to select that option. Hang in a second. Give it some time to boot; this can take longer than your usual boot-process. When it has booted, you will see the same black screen as in CMD. Go to step 5.
4. If you can log on to another account, you should log in to that account and open the "START" menu. Now, click on "RUN", and type cmd. A black screen will pop up.
5. In the command screen, you'll have to type "net user", followed by the account name that needs password recovery. followed by " *". Note the space between the username and the star. (e.g. "net user bob *")
6. Type in your new password. (You will NOT see any characters) Press enter, and repeat the password. Your password should be changed. Note that if you repeated the passwords with errors it will still say "The command completed successfully". Therefore, if it did not work, try doing it again. If you used another account on your computer to do this, go to step 3 and try that method.

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