Reset Windows Vista/7 password
We’ve all done it. Plug in a password, think we’ll remember it a month from now, and have our memory betray us. With most Linux distros you can just pop in a livecd and change the password, providing you did not use some sort of full disk encryption, but for Windows Vista and Windows 7 things can get more complicated.
You can purchase the Microsoft solutions to this problem, but if you’re like me you would prefer a free solution. SystemRescueCd is this solution.
Just burn the cd, boot from it (type rescuecd at the boot prompt) and wait. When you get a shell prompt just follow its instructions to mount your windows partition, and enter the system32 directoryand look for a file named “SAM”. Once you’ve found it just type chntpw -u <user> /path/to/SAM and follow its instructions. Reboot cleanly, and voila.
One thing I have noticed though is that sometimes chntpw cannot change Vista passwords. If this is the case for you just set the password blank, log in under windows, and change it there.
