Locked out of your PC ?
If you forget the password of the account on your Windows 10/11 PC/laptop, and you’re not able to log into it, here’s how you can reset your password.
Note: this method probably won’t work if you have BitLocker encryption set up on your PC/laptop.
- find a USB stick or CD/DVD which can be used to boot your PC. This could be
- a USB stick or DVD which was used to install Windows;
- a ‘system repair disk’ DVD created by Windows Backup (in Windows Control Panel).
- Or if you have a blank USB stick, you can create your own bootable USB stick using Microsoft’s Media Creation Tool which you can download from the Microsoft Windows website . But obviously you will need access to another PC or laptop to do this download & write onto the USB stick.
- Boot your PC or laptop from the USB stick or DVD you created in Step 1.
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Choose ‘Repair my PC’, then ‘Troubleshoot’ , then ‘Command prompt’. A black Command window should appear.
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Make sure we can access the hard disk :
X:> DIR C:\Windows\System32\utilman.exe( if this shows an error message then you may have to useDISKPARTto identify the hard drive Volume, and/orASSIGN LETTER=Yto allocate a drive Letter to it , then use Y: instead of C: in the following steps) -
Make a backup of the file we are going to modify:
X:> C:
C:> CD \Windows\System32
C:> COPY UTILMAN.EXE UTILMAN.OFF -
Overwrite the file :
C:> COPY CMD.EXE UTILMAN.EXE
Now reboot your PC from the hard disk, and when you see the Windows login page, click on the ‘Accessibility / Ease of Access’ icon at bottom-right of the page. It looks like a little person. A black Command Window should open up.
Now type the following command to list the users :
C:> NET USER
You should see your user listed. In our case, the user is ADMIN, so let’s reset his password to ‘PandaX-4154’ :
C:> NET USER ADMIN PandaX-4154