How To Recover Forgotten Windows Passwords

If you think that you will never be able to access your PC again because you have forgotten the Windows password, then we are happy to tell you that you are wrong. In this article, I will explain how to log in to your computer even when you do not remember your password. There are several options that you have and it may take just a few minutes to recover your password. First of all, I am going to tell you the ultimate solution which is reinstalling Windows. This is the only option you have if your hard disk is encrypted. To reinstall Windows, you can use software like Rufus. Rufus is a free and open-source software that enables you to reinstall Windows easily using a USB flash drive. You can download Rufus from their website. Unfortunately, as I said earlier, this is the only option you have if your hard disk is encrypted. Because there is no way to recover a password from an encrypted hard disk.

Now let’s see other options. The first step to recover a Windows password, if it seems impossible to remember it is to see if there is an administrator user in the system. Sometimes several people use the same PC with administrator privileges. If there is, it only has to access the Control Panel and then the Users window. There you will see all users who have a Windows account, yours included.

For the Admin, this is a very easy process. Admin only has to click on your user profile and then click on “Delete Password”. So it is always recommended, even if you are the only real user, to create an additional Administrator account. You can get you out of tricky situations if you forget the password of your account in Windows.

Now, we are going to look into another option. This method involves an open-source software that lets you reset Windows passwords. This software is called “OPH” and you can download this from SourceForge. Once you have run OPH from your USB drive, the program will analyze your system to see what Windows accounts there are and what their password is. After completed, you will be able to access your computer again. In the following image, you can see this application in action. On the left column, you can see the username and in the right column the recovered password.

OPH

With OPH you should not have problems to recover the lost password of Windows. If there is an issue, unfortunately, the only option you have left is reinstalling Windows.