If you’ve ever used a Windows computer, then you probably understand the importance of the Administrator password. By having an Administrator password, you sort of have a built-in security system. If you have multiple people sharing one computer, then you can keep those people from making serious changes to the system without your permission. If you’re allowing someone else to use a computer that you own, then you can similarly keep them from making serious changes to the system.
Even if your Windows computer only has one user account connected to it, you will still need to have Administrator credentials in order to access certain things. What do you do if you happen to forget the password that you originally set? What if someone somehow got into your settings and changed the password to something that you don’t know? Are you locked out of your Administrator settings forever?
Luckily, there are a few things in place that are meant to help people who find themselves in situations like that one. If you’ve forgotten your Windows Administrator Password, there’s no reason to go shopping for a new computer just yet. Windows has implemented a couple of things that you can use in order to reset or change your Administrator password. In this article, I’m going to talk about a couple of things that you can do to reset your Windows Administrator Password. I’ll also show you how you can use a very nifty software called PCUnlocker specifically for this purpose. Without further ado, let’s see if we can’t figure out a little more about how to work around this tech issue.
How do you reset a Windows Administrator password?
If you have a Windows 7 computer, then you can reset your Windows Administrator password. It just isn’t a very simple process. First of all, you need to have a Windows 7 System Repair Disc in your possession. Once you have it, you need to boot your computer from this disk. Doing this, you should boot directly into a window labeled System Recovery Options. You’re going to select your operating system and its connected hard drive from the list that appears, and click ‘Next’. In the next menu, you need to select the command prompt option. From there, you need to type each of these lines, with an enter between each one, without the quotation marks: “x:”, “cd windows\system32”, “ren utilman.exe utilhold.exe”, “copy cmd.exe utilman.exe”, “exit”.
From there, you’re going to write (without the quotation marks) “net user [currentUsername] [newPassword]” and hit enter. You’re going to want to substitute currentUsername with the username of the administrator account, and newPassword with the password that you would like to have assigned to the administrator account. Once that is done, you should be able to log right into the account from the login screen using the password that you created.
If you use Windows 10, then the process is a little bit easier. Most Windows 10 users have an account that is tied to a Microsoft account, meaning that your password information isn’t stored to the computer, it’s stored to Microsoft.com. All you should have to do is go through Microsoft’s forgotten password steps, which will usually involve answering security questions or maybe receiving a text message or something like that. It’s significantly more convenient, but it’s possible that you didn’t opt into this kind of account when you first got your computer. If that’s the case, then you’re basically going to be doing the same thing as before, just with a Windows 10 Recovery Drive. Whenever you’re able to get your password sorted out, make sure that you store it in a safe place so that something like this doesn’t happen again!
What is PCUnlocker?
If you aren’t super tech savvy and you’re afraid that you may make a mistake doing what I described below, then you’ll probably be happy to know that there is a much easier way to reset your Windows Administrator password — by using a software! PCUnlocker is a simple and intuitive product that is meant specifically to help you unlock your system. It supports virtually every version of Windows. That’s right, whether you’re having issues with a computer running Windows Vista, Windows 10, Windows XP, Windows 8, or Windows 2003, you should have no problem using this software. There are three versions of PCUnlocker, and they’re all a little different. PCUnlocker Standard is the most inexpensive version, costing $19.95. It packs all of the standard features that you would probably expect.
However, if you want a more comprehensive software, then you could buy PCUnlocker Professional, which costs $29.95. It has all of the features of Standard while also allowing you to burn a password reset USB flash drive (Standard only uses physical disks) and supports Windows Servers. PCUnlocker Enterprise, the most expensive version, costs $49.95 and can do everything that the previous two version can do. It can also unlock disabled or expired active directory accounts and boot a UEFI-based computer from a CD or a USB flash drive. However, if you don’t understand what any of that means, then you’re probably better off just using the Standard version. There’s no reason to spend money on something if you don’t know what the features actually do, especially if it’s just going to confuse you.
How to use PCUnlocker to reset your Windows Administrator password
Then, you need to install a smaller software that is used with PCUnlocker called ISO2Disc. Make sure that you install this directly onto your computer, not onto the disk. Open up ISO2Disc once it’s installed, and use the Browse button to find the ISO image file that came with your installation of PCUnlocker. Once you have everything set up and configured the right way, then you just need to click the “Start Burn” button in order to burn this image onto whatever disk you chose.
Once that’s done, then you need to insert the completed CD or flash drive into the computer that needs a password reset. Reboot the computer. Once the computer powers on, you should hit the setup key that is listed at the boot screen. (This can be something like F8, F2, F11, or something else depending on your computer.) Once you hit this button, you will enter BIOS Setup Utility. From there, navigate to the boot tab and change boot device priority. This affects what media your computer is choosing to boot up off of. In this case, you want to boot up off of your burned CD or USB flash drive. Select it, and press F10 to save your changes. Your computer should then boot up from this media.
Then, select the user account from the provided list that contains the account whose password needs to be changed. Once everything is set, just click Reset Password and then click Restart. Remove your CD or USB flash drive and boot up normally. Then you should be able to log into your account without using an administrator’s password. It’s really that simple!
