Reset Your Windows Password Using Kali Linux
Hello Cybrary members.Here I am again to talk about Passwords for Windows 7 or any version of Windows. Sometimes, we forget our password, or we want to reset the Windows password for a friend, officemate or anyone's laptop in legal way. Today, I'm am going to teach you how to reset a password using our Favorite Penetration Testing Operating System - Kali Linux.
Requirements:
- Kali Operating System (click here to download the program if you don't have it)
- USB or CD/DVD
Steps:
Step 1: Download Kali ISO and burn on a CD/DVD - many users are also using bootable USB
Step 2: Boot menu -> Select Live (Forensic Mode) ... sounds good!!
Step 3: If you're a first-time user of Kali, don't panic at initialization mode. It ill open a terminal window.
Step 4: Find the SAM (Secure Account Manager), where in almost of the Windows' OS passwords are saved. The file is usually located in Windows Folder. You can find under /Windows/System32/config/
Step 5: On our system, we find at /media/hard_drive_name/Windows/System32/config
Step 6: If we navigate using the image above, we're going to find and open the SAM. The image below shows the syntax for the SAM database.
Step 7: Type the command: chntpw -l SAM. The image below shows the list of usernames found in the SAM on my Windows 7 OS.
Step 8: Simply run this command: chntpw -u "username" SAM. For example, in this scenario, our username in Administrator, so simply type chntpw -u "Administartor" SAM.
Step 9: Voila, we found the main action, now you can press 1 for Clear, and so on. I hope you find this as a pretty cool idea on how to reset the password in any Windows 7 or other Windows OS. Regards from Philippine Security,/fr4nc1stein/sKyL3
