By Jennifer | Last Updated
There is no doubt that the password reset CD device or the installation CD can help to reset the Windows 7 login password. If you have no CD, how can you reset the Windows 7 Home/Professional/Enterprise/Ultimate login password?
When you forgot your Windows 7 login account password, and there is another administrator account, you can make use of this administrator account to reset your login account. If you can not find available administrator account, you can go to option 2.
1. Press Ctrl + Alt + Del to switch Windows 7 login user on login screen. Choose one administrator and type its correct password to access Windows 7. Or if there is an account called "Administrator", select it and probably you don't need password to sign in Windows 7 with administrative privileges.
2. Open Control Panel and go to User Accounts and Family Safety User Accounts.
3. Click Manage another account. And choose the user account you want to recover password for Windows 7.
4. Click Change the password or Remove the password option. Then set a new password for this user account or click "Remove Password" to successfully remove forgotten Windows 7 password.
Even you have no the installation CD or CD, you can make use of the USB flash disk to create the password reset disk on any accessible Windows computer with the help of iSunshare Windows 7 Password Genius. After that, you can use the USB disk to boot your locked Windows 7 computer and reset your login account password without data loss. Check the steps below:
Step 1: Get iSunshare Windows 7 Password Genius and install it on another accessible computer. You need to pay for the full version of this software to reset the Windows 7 password.
Step 2: Insert the USB flash drive into the accessible computer to create reset disk.
Start iSunshare Windows 7 Password Genius and select USB device option. Then you can find and select the inserted USB drive in the drop-down menu. At this time, you can click Begin burning to format the USB drive and make it a password reset disk.
Step 3: Boot the locked Windows 7 computer from the USB reset disk you created.
Insert the USB password reset disk into the locked Windows 7 computer and then set the computer boot from USB drive. Until you get into iSunshare Windows 7 Password Genius interface, the computer is booted from USB drive successfully.
Step 4: Reset Your Forgotten Windows 7 Password
As you can see from the below screenshot, the software will detect your Windows version and all user accounts automatically. You just need to choose the user account and then click Reset Password button. Then in the coming dialog, click “Yes” to remove your original password. At last, you can reboot the computer and drop out USB drive to make your Windows 7 startup without requiring a password.
When you successfully load Windows OS, you can go to your user account and set the login password to protect your computer again. If you are afraid of forgetting the password, you can keep this USB password reset disk for future use.
Chntpw, or what we call Offline NT Password & Registry Editor, can help you to create the password reset disk to reset Windows password.
Step 1: Download Chntpw to a computer you can access.
Step 2: Create a Windows password reset disk.
Unzip cd110511.zip and get a chntpw ISO file and burn the chntpw ISO file to USB flash drive with a burn tool.
Step 3: Set your locked computer boot from USB.
When power on the computer, press BIOS entry key to enter BIOS setting screen, and move USB to the first boot drive place. Save boot changes and boot your computer.
Step 4: Reset Windows password to blank.
4-1 Select the partition where Windows was installed on:
select 1 = show probable Windows (NTFS) partitions only
4-2 Select path and registry files
The default path Windows/system32/config is correct, so just press Enter to go on.
4-3 Select which part of registry to load, use predefined choices.
We want to reset password, so choose the first one: Password reset [SAM system security]
4-4 What to do with the user and password
Select 1 - Edit user data and passwords
4-5 Select a user to reset its password.
As you can see, there list all the user names and their password status. If you want to change Administrator password, type Administrator and press Enter.
4-6 Clear (blank) user password.
Of all the options of menu, the first one Clear (blank) user password is the most simple and effective option. Select 1 to clear Administrator password to blank instantly.
4-7 Password is cleared successfully.
When the Password cleared pops up, it means password has been cleared successfully.
Quit out and press Ctrl + Alt + Del to restart computer, then log into Windows computer without password.
If do not want to use software to reset Windows 7 password without CD, is there any method to access the locked Windows 7. Yes, you can run Command Prompt on the locked computer and reset Windows 7 password.
For example, you can run command prompt in safe mode with default administrator without password. Or run command prompt (cmd.exe) on locked computer instead of Sticky Keys application (sethc.exe). Then more details about resetting Windows 7 password, please refer to 3 ways to reset Windows 7 password with command prompt.
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