Forget Your Windows XP Administrator Password? Here's How to Resolve It

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If you've ever forgotten your Windows XP administrator password, you'll find this story entertaining. I know I thoroughly enjoyed it :)



My sister wanted me to help her with some PC issues: She wanted me to set up a regular backup routing to an external hard drive of key files and folders, as well as to set up her son's iTunes music on his new Mac. There were a few other things we wanted to do, but we never did because



She couldn't remember her Windows password





This normally wouldn't be a problem. Log off, log on as administrator, open up user manager, and edit her account.



However, she was the only administrator for the PC in question.



So, what to do? The first thing we tried was different permutations of what she thought the password was. When that didn't work, we went to the web, only to find about 275,000 results for the term "lost windows xp administrator password."



Near the top of the search results was an entry, however, that looked promising. There was another that looked a little less promising, but perhaps do-able if Option #1 didn't work.



In a nutshell, option #1 did not work.



This method involved re-booting using the Windows XP installation disk and doing a Windows Repair. After about 45 minutes, we were at the point where we could enter the User Manager, change the credentials for her, and finish the "repair." However, when we attempted to access the User Manager, we were confronted with an error (and I cannot remember what that error was).



To add insult to injury, we had to let the repair finish, whereupon which the video driver had been over-written with one that was incompatible with the video card in the PC, with the effect being a display whose resolution was 640x480 with -- get this! -- 4-bit color display!!



Roxio also somehow became non-functional and we had to re-install it.



So, 1 1/2 hours later, we had not made any progress.



Option #2 was a for-pay service that we almost agreed to, but I found another, better, faster, cheaper way.



Here's the procedure:

1. Boot into Safe Mode


2. Go to User Manager (in Control Panel)


3. Create a new "admin" account (call it what you want but give it full admin rights and a password you can remember)


4. Edit the user account in question by changing its admin rights to limited user and by modifying the password


5. Re-boot


6. Good as new

So there you have it: A free, easy, and quick way to change a Windows XP admin password without knowing what it is.