How To: Recover Your Lost Windows User Account Password
Ophcrack the password
Ophcrack is a simple GUI-based utility that runs from a CD. The main reason we are using this utility is that it does not automatically remove the password, but instead shows you the password. Ophcrack uses a highly optimized version of rainbow tables, making it very efficient at discovering passwords. In fact, it can recover over 99% of alphanumeric passwords within minutes.
There are three different versions of Ophcrack. We are going to use the Live CD version of Ophcrack, because we are assuming that you do not have another user account to run the program. It has two different versions of the Live CD, one for Vista/Windows 7 and one for Windows XP.
Click here to download the Windows XP Live CD or click here to download the Windows Vista/Window 7 Live CD. Save the appropriate file to your Desktop and burn it to disc.
Once you get the CD burned, put the disk in your drive and boot from the disk. You may have to change the boot order so you can boot from the CD.
Ophcrack will begin loading and eventually present you with three options, graphic mode, VESA mode and text mode. We are going to use graphic mode since it is the simplest option, so highlight Ophcrack graphic mode and press Enter.
Ophcrack will start displaying a lot of text; don’t worry about what it says.
When Ophcrack starts, it will load the files it needs to run into RAM.
Once it is fully loaded into RAM, it will automatically start looking for passwords.
You will find the password under the LM Pwd 1 or NT Pwd sections on the progress tab. Once the program finds the password, feel free to click Stop. Make sure you write down the password since the program will not change the password. When you are finished, click on the Exit button.
To restart the computer, press any key. When it asks if you want to shutdown, press “y” and the computer will restart and eject the CD. Take out the CD and boot Windows
You should now have the user account password. Sure, reformatting would have fixed the problem, but it is just as simple to recover the user account password. Now you know how to recover that user account password for your friend or significant other in case they have data on their computer they cannot afford to lose. You might want to write down their password for them on a post-it note, so you don’t have to perform this task again!