 Security experts will tell you not to leave your passwords on scraps of paper under your keyboard, just as you shouldn’t leave spare car keys above the sun visor. You shouldn’t write passwords down, but “best password practices” dictate mixing upper and lowercase letters with numerals and maybe a symbol or two for good measure. Oh, and don’t use the same password in too many places.
Needless to say, forgetting passwords is inevitable, and few lapses are less convenient than forgetting your Windows password. Maybe you recently changed the password (which is good for security) but neglected to remember your clever changes (which is bad for your blood pressure). Perhaps you inadvertently changed the wrong account permissions. Or Windows might have become corrupt through no fault of your own. There are many reasons why a password might not be accepted. But if one day you sit down and find your mind blank at the Vista login screen, don’t panic. We have ways to recover your password.
 Prepare To Restore | 
Don’t install! That could erase all of your data. In order to get to a restore point, you want to click Repair your computer. |
A System Restore point is like a snapshot of your system, a time freeze in which all of your program files, Registry keys, and so forth are captured in their present state. (NOTE: A System Restore point captures system files, not your data files, such as spreadsheets, word processing documents, or browser history.) By restoring this snapshot, you revert the system files and drivers back to exactly how they were when the snapshot was taken. This can be a life saver when a software update creates a system conflict, files become corrupt, or you forget your password.
Let’s say you’re running Windows Vista, get hit on the head, and forget your password. Once you’re out of the hospital and back at your PC, place your Windows Vista DVD in your optical drive and reboot the system. When the system reboots, you should see a message instructing you to “Press any key to boot from CD or DVD.” You have about five seconds to do this, and if you miss the opportunity, you’ll need to power cycle the machine to get the message again.
If you don’t see this message, it means that your system isn’t configured to check the optical drive during bootup before it checks anything else. This isn't hard to change. With most PCs, you turn the system on, wait for the screen to light up, and then start pressing the DELETE key repeatedly to enter the Basic Input/Output System, or BIOS. (Some PCs use a different key, such as the F2 key.) Every system's BIOS will be a little different, but on the first BIOS screen, it's common to see a line item for Advanced BIOS Features. Select this, and you’ll probably find options for boot devices or the boot sequence. Make sure that your optical drive is set to be the first boot device. When you have these settings in place, back out to the main screen and be sure to confirm/save the new settings when you choose Save & Exit Setup.
The system will then reboot, and you should see the Press Any Key To Boot From CD Or DVD message. You may encounter a screen called Windows Boot Manager, which will prompt you to select which operating system you wish to boot. Most likely, you’ll see only one option, Windows Setup [EMS Enabled], and it will already be highlighted. Press ENTER. | 
There are several recovery tools within Windows, some of which you may need later. For now, choose System Restore to access your restore point list. |
What you’re trying to access on the Vista DVD is called the Windows Recovery Environment, and if you encounter Windows Boot Manager, you can reach it through the next screen, System Recovery Options. Select System Restore, the second out of five options on this screen. If you don’t see the Windows Boot Manager, you will enter the Recovery Environment after pressing a key to boot from the Vista DVD.
Note that not all systems ship with a Vista version that includes this. Every so often, you may find a system that lacks the Windows Recovery Environment on the Vista DVD and instead has it installed on a small partition within the hard drive. If this is the case on your system, you can typically access the partition by periodically tapping the F8 key instead of the DELETE key during bootup. If successful, you’ll then see a startup menu with an option for the Windows Recovery Environment. Select this, press ENTER, and wait for the Environment to load.
Inside The Environment
Whether you load from the Vista DVD or a preinstalled partition, the Windows Recovery Environment looks the same. The first screen you’ll encounter will ask you for the language to install, your time and currency format, and your keyboard or input method. If you’re American, you’ll most likely want to answer with the defaults of English, English (United States), and US, respectively. Click Next when you’re ready.
Now you arrive at the Install Windows screen. The last thing you want to do is click the big Install Now button in the middle of the screen, which would guide you through the process of wiping your system clean with a new Vista installation. Instead, look in the lower-left corner and click the Repair Your Computer link. The Recovery Environment will now scan your hard drive for existing Windows Vista installations. When done, you’ll be presented with a System Recovery Options window showing the various installations found. Most likely, there will only be one. Click on your installation to highlight it and then click the Next button. | 
With only a few clicks, you can manually create System Restore points. This is good practice before any significant system addition or change. |
(NOTE: Alongside the Next button is a Load Drivers button. If you have a system that’s more than four or five years old, there’s a chance that you may need to manually install drivers for one or more of your PC’s components, such as an optical drive or controller card, in order to let Windows control it. Having to do this is very rare with Windows Vista, which incorporates a substantial library of drivers for all manner of hardware.)
Now you’ll encounter a new System Recovery Options window that prompts you to select one of five recovery tools. Click the second one, System Restore. This selection will initiate the System Restore wizard.
The next window shows a list of recent restore points, including their date and time of creation, as well as a description you might have given for the restore point when creating it. Click to highlight the restore point to which you want to revert. Most often, you’ll want to restore the most recent point, but this may not be the case, depending on when you changed your password. As you might have guessed by now, it’s a good idea to create a restore point before intentionally changing your login password. Click to highlight your desired restore point and then click Next.
This next step might be confusing. Windows asks you to confirm which disks to restore. This is more of a rhetorical question for our purposes because Vista’s home drive, probably C:, will be selected by default and can’t be unchecked. The point of this screen is to allow you to restore any other drive volumes in addition to Vista’s own. For the sake of our password exercise, let’s assume we don’t wish to restore other drive volumes and leave any other boxes empty. Click Next.
Now comes the confirmation screen, when Windows shows you which options you've selected. You may be reminded that you're not going to restore some disks on your system, which is fine. Click the Finish button, don't get panicky when Windows reminds you that once you proceed, you can't back out of the restore process, and click the Yes button. You should soon see a pop-up window informing you that the restore was successful. Go ahead and click the Restart button. When Windows loads, you should be able to input the password that was in place prior to your restore point. After you log in, a final System Restore alert box will inform you that the procedure was successful. Close this and smile. You are safe.
A Few Alternatives
As we said early on, there are many reasons why your login password might not work. One of these is corruption of Windows files. If you have multiple accounts on the Windows system, finish doing the restore procedure described above and then log in to each account and make sure their passwords work. If not, log in to an account that does work and has the rights to alter other users’ passwords. Change the password that’s not working. This should fix the glitch. | 
In order to boot from your Windows disc, the system must know to search the optical drive before the hard drive. You set that option here in the BIOS. |
Another spin on the password problem could be that you accidentally deleted a protected administrator account, thereby cutting off login access to another admin account. No worries. Once you log in after restoring, click Start, Control Panel, User Accounts And Family Safety, and User Accounts. Click Manage Another Account, click the Continue button, and then click the Create A New Account link. Pick the radio button for Administrator and then proceed with the account creation. Microsoft advises against using the restored protected administrator account.
Finally, you might have changed a protected admin account into a standard user account—not an unusual situation, as conditions in a home or office change and the main admin realizes that giving everyone complete control may not be the best idea. But after making this change, you might not be able to log on to another admin account. Finish the restore and reboot, log in, and then create a new protected administrator account. Log in to this new admin account and change the old protected administrator account into a standard account.
Not least of all, we’ve assumed in this article that you’re a Vista user. What if you still use Windows XP? There are two main ways to get around a forgotten or expired password: a password reset disk or using administrator privileges to create a new password. The first route is the easy one if you created a password reset disk in advance. There are several ways to do this depending on your account’s administrator rights and whether or not your system is in a domain. (Visit http://tinyurl.com/y7ps9a for specific instructions.)
What if you don’t have a password reset disk and can’t log in? Try this: Restart the system and press CTRL-ALT-DELETE twice. Type the name of an administrator account and its corresponding password that you do remember. Once logged in to this account, click Start and Run and then type control userpasswords2. Click OK. Go to the Users tab, highlight the troublesome account, and click Reset Password. Enter a new password into the New Password and Confirm New Password boxes, click OK, and restart the system. Everything should work now. 
by William Van Winkle
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