What happens if you forgot the administrator password

Then click change your password. You can find this at the top of the window. Enter your current password and your new password. Then click Save. Restart your computer to sign in with a new password. Tagged: Admin Privileges Windows Was this article helpful? Yes No. Once there, type each of these lines, pressing Enter after each one.

Replace the x in the first line with the operating system location you noted above. At the log-on screen, click the Ease of access icon in the lower-left corner to bring up a command prompt. Your Windows 10 user account is almost certainly connected to your online Microsoft.

Head to Microsoft's account recovery page and walk through the steps to get back into your account. This is easiest if you're set up the proper recovery methods, such as a backup email address and phone number. Those who use a local account will have a harder time resetting their password. But if you haven't set these up, you'll have to go through a somewhat tedious workaround process.

You'll find everything you need to know about this in our guide to resetting a forgotten Windows 10 admin password. The situation with Windows 8. Windows 8 was the first version to support signing in with a Microsoft account. If you sign in with your Microsoft account and have forgotten that password, you can recover it using the Microsoft password reset page as above. Users with local accounts will need to pursue the workaround method linked in the Windows 10 section above to reset their password.

Windows 8. It will take a bit of time, but it's your best bet assuming you don't want to reset your entire system. As you might expect, Windows 7 offers the least amount of options for resetting a lost password. Because there's no support for Microsoft accounts, you're stuck resetting your local account manually. Follow the steps described in the earlier guide. We've looked at the best solutions to reset a forgotten admin password in each current version of Windows.

However, there are some other methods you should know about. Every modern Windows version supports the creation of password reset disks. These allow you to set up a flash drive to act as a backup key to unlock your account. Because you need to set them up before you get locked out, we didn't mention them above.

If you forget the administrator password for your computer, you'll need to contact a local computer repair shop, where they'll have the tools to administratively reset your administrator password. This is document arni in the Knowledge Base. Last modified on Skip to: content search login. Knowledge Base Toggle local menu Menus About the team.