NO PASSWORD? How to Safely Recover Access to a Windows PC

Now it was not unheard of as an IT professional in a school for a staff member to go off on vacation and come back and they couldn't remember their password. So it doesn't happen to just seniors. IT professionals have a lot of tools that allow them to fix accounts so that you can access the operating system and the data on that laptop or desktop. But when it comes to home users, it's more difficult. Now there are third-party software that you can purchase that will allow you to get into your laptop or your desktop even without a password. So you can purchase that. For home users, it's often the case that you have a senior family member who forgets their password or in my case, my dad used to change his password once a week whether he needed to or not and it was just impossible to keep up with him as to what he changed it to that week. Sometimes you have a friend who will give you a computer, a laptop or a desktop and they don't know what the password is and they give it to you. You don't want to lose the software that's on it. You don't want to lose the operating system on it. So we need a method that allow us to get into the operating system and all the resources on it without a password. Now Microsoft doesn't make this easy because Windows logging on is a secure process and all operating systems protect against breaking in and accessing somebody else's data. It's a challenge to break into an operating system without a username and password. Microsoft provides a number of ways to allow someone who owns the computer who forgets their password to get access to that password information legitimately. You can purchase software as I mentioned. You can also hack the operating system but this is a complicated process and this is what I'm going to show you in this video. There are sophisticated tools available to corporations, companies, individuals if you want to recover passwords on a Windows device. So you can see this is pretty pricey, $499. If you do have deep pockets and you want this kind of capability, you can purchase software that will do all these things shown by the developer of this software. There are a number of things that make this more difficult, accessing the operating system and the data without a password. One is if you use Windows Hello or if you're using BitLocker encryption or Secure Boot or Fast Startup. Now these are not impossible but they definitely make it more challenging. Now if you're watching this video and you're saying, I have no idea what you're talking about, that's okay but those things might be the reason why you're not going to be successful even doing what I am going to show you. Now ConBoot is a less expensive method of getting access. It's a software that you can buy that allows you to get access to your computer even without a password. Here you can see for personal license it's $35, for commercial license it's $75. Now I'm not recommending these, I'm just making you aware of them. So if the method that I show you doesn't work, you can always try these options. Another third-party vendor is called PassMoz, Lab Window, and again they show you the price. You can also take advantage of this product. There's also WinPassKey. Now I have not tried any of these products. They're out there, they're available. I'm just making you aware of them so again you can take advantage of them if you need to. All right, how do we log on to a computer that we don't know the password on? Let's get started. How can we log on to a Windows computer, get access to the operating system and the data without a password? We're going to use a well-known exploit. It's called utilman.exe exploit. It's free, requires a number of steps, and some of them are complex. But if you're willing to follow me, I'm going to walk you through and show you how to do it. Step one, we're going to create a bootable USB disk. So if you want to pause the video and just take a look, this is what we're going to do. This is our plan of attack and I'm going to walk you through each of these steps. But when we finish, we're going to be able to log on to this computer. In my case, I'm going to use a virtual machine. You're going to watch me work with a Windows 11 box, but it's going to be a virtual machine where most of you are going to be using a desktop or a laptop. In our case, we've got John. We know his username, but we don't know his password. So we need to get into the computer, access the operating system and the data, and hopefully even log on as John. Now, one of the first things you're going to have to do is create a USB bootable flash drive. There are hundreds of videos on YouTube that walk you step-by-step on how to create a USB bootable flash drive. You can use any of those, or I have two videos on my channel. One's called Circumventing Windows 11 Hardware Lock, which will allow you to put Windows 11 on any PC that you want. You can also use that. It's got a URL that'll take you right to that video. I also have another one that I did. It's called Building a Bootable Flash Drive Using Rufus. This is a great utility that will help you build a bootable flash drive. But again, there's lots of videos on how to create a bootable flash drive. Any one of them will get you to where we want you to be as we begin this method. What we're going to do here is I'm going to walk you through the steps one at a time as we work through how to break into the operating system and access the account information so that you can log on. Now, everything that I'm going to do is going to be exactly what you're going to see and do on your laptop or desktop. Now, I'm going to use a virtual machine, which is a little bit different, but most of it is going to be exactly the same. I'm going to be booting from a DVD on my virtual machine. You're going to be booting off a flash drive that you've prepared with either Windows 11 or Windows 10, whatever your operating system is that we need to access. You're going to have your USB. I'm going to be using a DVD. Outside of that, we're going to do the same thing. You're going to want to go ahead and boot. I'm going to boot my virtual machine. I already have, in my case, my DVD installed. In your case, you're going to have your flash drive plugged into the computer and then boot. So, we're going to hit enter and you'll see that it recognizes the flash drive because it says hit any key. So, it's actually reading the information off that flash drive. Now, for you to get to the boot menu, you're going to have to find out from your computer what the boot menu is so that you can hit the key to interrupt the boot process so it doesn't boot off the hard drive. Instead, it boots off your USB flash drive. I'm going to put charts in the video notes. I'm also going to display information so you can see what are the most popular keystrokes that you hit as it starts to boot up. So, you can get the boot menu and you can choose the flash drive, not the local hard drive. That's what I did. I already have set it up so that it would boot from the DVD. In my case, for you, it will be a flash drive. So, here's where we are. We're actually booting from our flash drive as if we're going to install Windows 11 or if you've got Windows 10 as if we're going to install Windows 10. This is exactly where we want to be. Now, I'm going to hit two keys. I'm going to hit shift F10. We have our command prompt that popped up. This is going to be a place where we are able to modify the operating system on the laptop and on the desktop. You say, well, Mr. Interpol, I thought we just booted off our USB flash drive. Yes, that's giving us this operating system that we're using right now, but we're actually going to change the operating system on the laptop and the desktop in order to change this account information. The first thing I want to do is I want to make sure that this software is seeing your local hard drive. I'm going to go C colon and hit enter, and then I'm going to do DIR. This is what you should see on your screen. Program files, program files x86, users, Windows. You don't have to see Windows.old, just those. If you see pretty close to what I've got displayed, then we know that the local hard drive on the laptop or the desktop is given the drive letter C. We're good to go. Now, we're ready to change two files, and we're going to do that with the move command and the copy command. I'm going to use the move command, and you're going to type it in exactly. You must do this exact. You don't have to understand what we're doing, but you do have to do it exactly as it is shown. We're going to do C colon backslash Windows backslash system32utilman.exe. There's a space here, and then C colon backslash Windows system32utilman.exe.back. You don't have to understand what we're doing here, but you do have to do it exactly. I hit enter, and now it shows me one file moved. Actually, we didn't move a file. We just changed its name. Utilman.exe is now utilman.exe.back. The next thing we're going to do is use the copy command. Again, accuracy is everything. Copy space C colon backslash Windows system32 backslash cmd.exe. Space between exe and the next set of instructions, which is going to be C colon backslash. We need to make sure you put a space between the exe and where we begin to type C again. C colon backslash Windows system32 backslash utilman. Here we're actually going to change this utility called cmd, and we're going to make it look and act like utilman.exe. Then we're going to go ahead and hit enter, and we should see a file copied. We have completed what we need to do with our USB flash drive. Now we can exit out, reboot our computer, the one we want to log into, and we're ready to go. Let's go ahead and exit the command line. Then we're going to come up to this GUI interface that's ready to install Windows 11, Windows 10. We're not. We're going to exit out of it. We've done everything we need. So we're going to hit the X, and we're going to quit the install. Now we're going to reboot our laptop or desktop. I'm not going to hit any key, just going to leave it alone. I want it to boot into Windows or Windows 11, Windows 10. Now we're booting into our operating system. Remember, we can't get into this. Now that I'm back up to my screen, I don't know what John's password is. I'm going to come down to this icon down here that gives me access to accessibilities, things that allow me to use my computer more easily. Normally, when I click that little icon, I would launch utilman.exe, but I changed that. It's going to launch cmd.exe. So I'm going to go ahead and hit that, and that is exactly what I want. Now I'm on the operating system with powerful rights to change the account information. Now we're getting close to the end. We've got the laptop booted up, the desktop booted up. We used our icon to launch the command prompt, and now we're ready to go look and see what accounts are on our laptop or desktop. I'm going to do net user, and I'm just going to hit enter, and it's going to list all the accounts, the logged on users that are on that laptop or desktop, whichever case is yours. In this list, we can see John. Now, how do we change his password so that we can log on with John? So we're going to say net user John. That's the account name, and then right after the space, I'm going to put the password that I want. If I hit enter, it's going to put a blank password. I'm going to put P-A-S-S-W-O-R-D 10. You can see what password I'm using, and I'll use that same password to log on. So I'm going to hit enter, and that went ahead and changed John's password to the one that I just typed. Let's come back here, and I'm going to log on with capital P-A-S-S-W-O-R-D 10, and we're logged on. There we are, successfully logged on with a Windows 11 box that we had no idea what the password was. We're now able to log on as John, and we're ready to go. Okay, Mr. Interpol, is everything this easy as you have shown us? Well, no. There are many pain points that you can have if you have things like BitLocker installed on your laptop or desktop, if you've been using Windows Hello, if you're having difficulty with the boot menu, trying to interrupt the boot process so you can boot off the USB flash drive. There's lots of pain points in this process. If you are successful in everything I've shown you so far, you're done. If you would like to see some of the helps and some of the things and suggestions that I have on some of those pain points, you can continue watching this video, and I'll touch on those items to help some of you get past those hurdles. There's also video notes, very important. Download the video notes under the video description. They're free, you just download them, open them up, they're in a PDF format, and you can read a lot of additional help and assistance that you can get. We hope that you're successful at this point. You don't need any more of this video, but if you do, just keep watching. So there are some things that can make this process of cracking the account information on your desktop and laptop difficult, and we'll talk about each of them. So let's get started. On our channel, all the videos we create are teaching videos. We have free video notes on just about every video we create. If you go to the YouTube video, you can go to the video description section, and you can see where I've got a red box under documentation. You can download things in Word format, PDF format. If I do PowerPoint, you can download PowerPoints in the PowerPoint format, as well as PDF format. So we really want information in your hands. The documentation that we have in the video notes provide extra steps, extra information that might help you get through the process that otherwise would not. So take a look at it. It's free. Now, one of the most challenging parts of this is getting to the PC or the laptop's boot menu. I didn't make it hard. They didn't call me up and say, Mr. Vanderpool, we're going to make an Acer laptop. Can you tell us how to make it easy? All these manufacturers have their own method, their own key that you hit while the system is booting up that gives you access to their boot menu. Sometimes you have to go to the firmware, the BIOS or UFF setup, and go in there and modify that. It makes it more complex. There's no easy way around this. Mr. Vanderpool did not make it hard. You may have to really work hard in getting through this part, which is often the most difficult part. I put some mini charts that give you the most popular keystrokes to hit as it begins to boot up to get to that boot menu. So you can choose the USB flash drive, not the hard drive, when you boot up. This is an example of a boot menu where you can see the user now can choose with their keys, up arrow and down arrow, what they want to boot this device from. So this is what you want to get access to when you're booting up your laptop or your desktop. This is an example of the chart that we'll have in the notes. So you can look up your computer and see if it's on here. And again, try to see if that keystroke will give you the boot menu. As you're booting up the PC, you're tapping on your boot menu key as it boots up to try to interrupt the boot process. So you can choose the flash drive, not the hard drive. Now one of the features of today's laptops and PCs is users complained about how slow Windows booted. So manufacturers added a feature called Fast Boot. It's in your firmware of your PC and laptop. It actually ignores everything that it normally would do during boot up to get you Windows up as fast as possible so that you as a user is happy. It booted up in seconds rather than 10 seconds or 15 seconds, which made everybody in the world irritated. So Fast Boot can actually cause you not to be able to hit your key and get to the boot menu. So if Fast Boot is enabled, you're going to have to go in your firmware, your BIOS, your UEFI BIOS, and disable Fast Boot. Here I'm in the firmware of a laptop. And you can see at the very bottom, I'm at the Fast Boot area. And so I would disable Fast Boot. So you're going to have to find out your manufacturer. If that's the issue, get in there and disable Fast Boot because many times that will not allow you to get to that boot menu. Here's another example of a Chinese motherboard that has in the firmware the option under boot options. It has the Fast Boot. And you can enable it or disable it. We want to disable it. Another problem is Secure Boot. This is different than Fast Boot. Secure Boot is a way of protecting the Windows operating system from malicious code being injected during the boot process. Almost every PC laptop supports Secure Boot. That can also prevent you from booting to a USB flash drive. Okay, this is the bad news section. If your laptop or desktop has hard drive encryption, you can't do this. You're done. There's not going to be any salvation for this laptop or desktop. You're going to reinstall Windows because you're not going to get access to that data. That's the purpose of encryption, to keep you out of that data unless you are authorized. And at this point, you're not. So if your hard drive is encrypted, Windows provides Windows BitLocker. And if that's turned on or you have a third-party drive encryption tool enabled, get that USB flash drive that you just created and reload Windows 11 because you're not going to break this password if that hard drive is encrypted. Now, if you have Windows Hello turned on, Windows Hello is a feature in Windows 10 and 11 that allows very secure sign-on using biometrics like facial recognition from your camera or fingerprint or a pin. You still can do this method if Windows Hello is enabled, so you don't have to worry about it. You're good to go. In our discussion of things that are difficult that add difficulty to the process of logging on to a laptop or desktop that we don't know the password to, or even maybe even the account, getting on that machine and accessing those files in the operating system, this is one more difficulty. It's called the Microsoft account. This is where you log on with a phone number or an email address. This is called Microsoft MSA account. If you've purchased a laptop or desktop within the last two, three years, you've been faced with a requirement by Microsoft to create a Microsoft account, an MSA account. There's definite reasons for Microsoft doing this. One, it's more secure. There are many benefits to an MSA account. And in most cases, it's not a big deal because a lot of people already have an MSA account, so adding it to logging on to Windows 11 is no big deal. What is an MSA account? MSA account is a cloud-based identity, and it's used to access Microsoft services like Outlook.com, OneDrive, Xbox Live, and Windows 11 itself. When you sign into Windows 11 with an MSA account, you're authenticating through Microsoft's online servers rather than the Windows 11 box that you're logging on to. Now, when we broke into John's account, we actually impersonated John. We logged on with his user account, and we created a password that we knew. So, we actually impersonated John. We can't impersonate anyone with an MSA account, which is one of the reasons for Microsoft doing this. Now, we can get into the PC, and we can have access to the operating system and files, but we can't impersonate any account that's using an MSA account. Here's a basic chart that compares John's account that we broke into and got his password. And you can look at all the things that you can do or not do with a local account. And then in the center are the benefits of an MSA account, which is why Microsoft is moving or trying to move everyone to use an MSA account. How are we going to do this? Well, we're going to enable a secret account that's on the PC called Administrator. That's the name of the user. It's generally disabled. We're going to give it a password that we know, and then we're going to reboot the system, and then we're going to log on with the administrator, the new password, and you'll have access to files and folders. But we won't be able to impersonate any user on that PC. You'll have access to files and folders, but that's all. Now, let's pretend this is a Windows 11, and it's got an MSA account, which you're probably going to see a lot of in the future. A lot of new computers, new laptops are going to require users to create MSA accounts. But the logon is going to be a phone number or an email address, and then some password. That's an MSA account. How are we going to tackle this? Well, what we're going to do is we're going to go after an account that's on every copy of Windows 10 and Windows 11, but it's disabled, and Microsoft doesn't want you to use that account, and that account is called the administrator. We're going to go in, enable that account, and we're going to give it a password, and then reboot the system, and then log on with that account. Let's get started. We're going to go over to our accessibility icon, click that, and that's going to give us our powerful access to the operating system so that we can do what we want to do. In the command prompt, I typed in net user administrator forward slash active colon yes, and then I'm going to hit enter, and here the command completed successfully. What we did was we took that disabled account administrator, and we made it enabled or active. Now let's change its password so we know what its password is. I'm going to type in net space user space administrator space, and then I'm going to put my password that I want for this account, which is going to be dollar sign capital P-A-S-S-W-O-R-D 10 pound symbol. You see the command was completed successfully. Now that account that is normally on every PC, we've made it active, turned it on, and we've given it a password. So let's reboot our system and log on with this account. So now we have rebooted our PC, and notice we have a new account down here. Over here, administrator, and we're going to click on administrator, and we're going to put in our password, password 10 pound symbol, and now we're logged on. Notice Windows recognizes us as a new user on this PC, so it's asking you questions like you're a brand new user. So go ahead and answer the questions like you want, and again, you have full access to the operating system and on the files that are on this PC. Just be aware you're not impersonating any MSA account. All right, last advice. Undo what you've changed. Okay, Mr. Vanderpool, what about those files I changed? I wouldn't worry about those. There's not one in 10,000 people that will ever understood what you did, and you're probably just fine. Now turn on Secure Boot. If you turned off Secure Boot, go back and turn Secure Boot on. If you turned off Fast Boot, turn on Fast Boot. Undo some of those changes. Do you need to change those files that we initially changed? Can you? Yes, you can. You can go back and rechange them if you want, but I wouldn't worry about it. If we were helpful in any way and got you through your problem, then subscribe. Give the video a like. Do something that's positive for the work that we've done. Everything we do is free for you. So thank you for watching, and thank you for supporting us.