How to Reset Lost Windows 7 Password with Hiren’s Boot CD

By | July 6, 2015
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Hi there, so you forgot the administrator password on your Windows 7 computer, and now you are wondering how to reset it? You are in the right place. Here I will demonstrate you to reset lost Windows 7 password offline by running chntpw tool from Hiren’s Boot CD.

How to Reset Lost Windows 7 Password with Hiren’s Boot CD?

  1. Go to the website hirensbootcd.org and click the Download link. Scroll down the page and download the compressed file Hirens.BootCD.15.2.zip. The file extracts into a folder and within that folder you will find the bootable .iso image file: Hiren’s.BootCD.15.2.iso.
  2. Burn the ISO image to your CD using your favourite burner (or put it to a USB flash drive with the freeware ISO2Disc). Power on your computer and make the CD-ROM to boot first.
  3. Once the computer has started from the CD, you will get to Hiren Boot CD startup page with many utilities. Select Offline NT/2000/XP/Vista/7 Password Changer and hit Enter.

    hirens-boot-cd

  4. Next you’ll see the Linux kernel boot options. Just press Enter.

    step1-boot-options

  5. On the following screen you need to select the partition where Windows 7 is located. In my screenshot you can see that there is only one partition, so I type in the number 1 and press Enter. Your situation may be different if you have multiple partitions or hard disk drives.

    step2-select-disk

  6. Now it needs to know the exact location of the Windows registry. Except in the rarest of occasions, the default location will be the correct one. Just press Enter to accept the default Windows Registry path.

    step3-select-registry

  7. The next screen will ask which part of the registry it should load. Choose the default choice “[1] – Password reset [sam system security]” and press Enter.

    step4-load-registry

  8. Now the chntpw utility needs to know exactly what you want to do. Choose the default choice “[1] – Edit user data and passwords” and press Enter.

    step5-chntpw

  9. This screen shows that three users were discovered: Administrator, Guest and Tom. The account that I am trying to clear the password on is the Tom account. Notice at the bottom of the screen that I have typed in Tom and now I just need to press Enter.

    step6-enter-username

  10. Type 1 for “Clear (blank) user password” and then press Enter.

    step7-clear-password

  11. Type ! to quit editing user and then press Enter.

    step8-quit-user-edit

  12. Type q and press Enter to quit the chntpw tool.

    step9-quit-chntpw

  13. This screen shows that we have reached the final step: writing the password changes to disk. Enter y for yes and press Enter.

    step10-save-changes

  14. Remove the Hiren’s Boot CD and press Ctrl + Alt + Delete to reboot your computer. After rebooting you will be able to log in to Windows 7 without entering a password. If you are the only user on your computer, Windows 7 will boot all the way to the desktop and will skip the logon screen altogether.