Reset Forgotten Windows Password

First, the One Rule — Only Recover a PC That Is Yours

Every route on this page is for a computer you own, or one its owner has asked you to recover. Using the same steps on someone else's PC without permission is illegal — including under India's IT Act — and some of these routes permanently destroy the owner's encrypted files even when they "work". If the PC is not yours, hand it back; if it belongs to your office or school, skip straight to Step 9.

Try the Other Sign-In Options First

People often forget the password but not the PIN — and Windows treats them as separate keys. On the sign-in screen, look for Sign-in options under the password box. If you ever set up a PIN, a fingerprint or face unlock, use it.

The moment you are in: open Settings, then Accounts, then Sign-in options, choose Password and set a new one — with a Microsoft account it will ask you to verify it is you. Write the new password into your password manager before you do anything else. This is the only route that costs you absolutely nothing, which is why it is first.

Work Out Which Account You Actually Have

Windows has two completely different kinds of sign-in, and they recover in completely different ways. Read the sign-in screen carefully before you try anything:

Microsoft account — the sign-in screen shows an email address under your name. The password lives on Microsoft's servers and can be reset from any phone or other computer (Step 4). The same password opens your Outlook email, OneDrive and the Microsoft Store.

Local account — only a plain name, no email. The password exists only inside this PC. Nothing on the internet can reset it; only preparations made earlier, another admin, or offline methods can (Steps 5–8). A password hint after a wrong attempt is another local-account sign.

Work or school account — the name carries a company or school domain. Neither route above is yours to use; its password lives with your office (Step 9).

Microsoft Account — Reset the Password Online

This is the easy, supported road. You do not need the locked PC for the reset itself — a phone browser is enough:

On any phone or PC, open Microsoft's password reset page (account.live.com/password/reset) and enter the email shown on your sign-in screen. Prove it is you with the code sent to your recovery phone number or backup email. Set a new, strong password — one you have never used here before; Microsoft may refuse recently used ones. Understand what just happened: the password changed for your whole Microsoft life — email, OneDrive, Office, every device. Other devices will ask for the new password as they reconnect; that is normal, not a new problem.

Then the step everyone misses: back at the locked PC, click the network icon at the bottom right of the sign-in screen and connect to your Wi-Fi, then sign in with the new password. Until the PC goes online once, it still expects the old password, because it has not heard about the change yet — an offline PC rejecting the new password does not mean the reset failed.

Local Account — Security Questions or a Reset Disk

A local account has no server to appeal to, but it has two polite doors — both built before or at the sign-in screen:

Security questions. On Windows 10 (version 1803 and later) and Windows 11, local accounts can have three security questions set at creation. After a wrong password, the sign-in screen offers Reset password and asks them. Answer correctly and you set a new password on the spot.

A password reset disk. While you were signed in, Windows could write a small file called userkey.psw to a USB drive. Plug that drive in at the sign-in screen and the Forgotten Password wizard matches the file against the half kept inside Windows and lets you set a new password. The catch is absolute: the disk only works if you made it before the lockout — the wizard can only run inside a signed-in session, so a reset disk cannot be created for an already locked PC, and a disk made for a different account or a different PC will not match.

Another Admin Account Can Reset It — at a Price

If anyone else has an administrator account on this PC, they can reset your password from inside Windows. Read the cost in the warning below before anyone clicks anything, then use whichever route the edition offers. The command-line route works everywhere: sign in with the working admin account, open Command Prompt as administrator, list the exact account names, then set the new password (Ravi below is only an example — replace it with the locked account's exact name from the first command's list; the * makes Windows prompt for the new password twice instead of printing it on screen):

net user
net user Ravi *

On Pro editions you can instead open lusrmgr.msc, go to Users, right-click the account and choose Set Password; on some editions, Settings → Accounts → Other users offers the same reset. Windows itself warns on the graphical routes that encrypted files and stored passwords can be lost — that warning deserves to be read twice. Afterwards, sign out of the helper account and sign in to the recovered account with the new password yourself, to prove it works.

BitLocker On? Find the Recovery Key First

Encryption sits below Windows: before the sign-in screen exists, the drive itself must be unlocked. If your PC has BitLocker on, no offline tool can even read the disk — let alone edit its accounts — without the 48-digit recovery key, and tampering with boot files or hardware is exactly the kind of disturbance that makes BitLocker demand that key at the next start. So before any last-resort attempt, find the key. Search in this order:

Your Microsoft account — the most common home by far: sign in on any device and open the page listing BitLocker recovery keys for your devices, matching by the key ID shown on the blue recovery screen. Then a printout or a photographed page from setup (check the drawer where PC papers live), then a USB drive holding a small key text file, then your office IT (work machines usually store the key automatically), and the person who set the PC up.

Offline Boot-Media Tricks — the Last Resort, With Real Costs

The video's own overview puts these last, and this page keeps them there — described honestly, not taught step by step. Offline methods boot the PC from USB into an environment where Windows is not running, then edit the local account database (the SAM) directly or swap a sign-in-screen system file to reach a command prompt. They can return access to a local account — and their price list is the admin-reset price list from Step 6, plus their own extras:

EFS-encrypted files: gone permanently. All DPAPI secrets: gone — browser passwords, saved app and network credentials, Wi-Fi keys, personal certificates. Windows Hello may need rebuilding — the PIN and biometrics are tied to the account's credential state. A file swap that is not restored afterwards can leave an all-powerful command prompt sitting on the sign-in screen of a running PC — an open door for the next person who sits down — and the attempt can simply fail midway on a hibernated (Fast Startup) disk or a wrongly picked drive letter.

Work or School PC — Call IT Instead of Resetting It Yourself

If the PC belongs to your office or school, its password does not live in the laptop at all: at sign-in, the PC passes your credentials to a domain controller (or Microsoft Entra ID in the cloud), and that server decides right or wrong. Local tricks act on a database your work account is not in — there is literally nothing on the disk for them to reset — and the laptop is often BitLocker-encrypted under company policy, with the key held by IT. Company monitoring can also log boot-from-USB attempts and altered system files, turning a home experiment into a conversation with HR.

So make the two-minute call like a professional: call from a channel IT can verify, expect identity questions (that friction is the security working), and say clearly the device name if you know it, whether you are at the office or remote, and whether the screen shows a normal sign-in, a BitLocker recovery page, or an account-locked message — each routes differently. An account locked out by too many wrong tries is not the same as a forgotten password: lockouts often clear on a timer, and IT can unlock instantly.

Back In? Build the Safety Net So This Never Repeats

The reset worked. Before relief turns into forgetfulness, spend five minutes making the next lockout a two-minute job:

Make a password reset disk now (local accounts): plug in any small USB drive, open Control Panel → User Accounts → Create a password reset disk, follow the Forgotten Password Wizard with your current password, and check the drive now contains userkey.psw. Label it and store it somewhere safe — not in the laptop bag. Update your Microsoft account's recovery phone and backup email to ones you use today, and add the authenticator app as a second proof. Save your BitLocker recovery key somewhere beyond this PC. Store the new password in a password manager, set up a PIN again if it was cleared, and consider keeping a second administrator account on the PC — a spare key held by someone you trust beats every trick on this page.