Scribd
Upload
78 views5 pages

Reset Windows Server Administrator Password

This document provides steps to reset the administrator password on Windows Server using a Finnix rescue CD. It involves booting Finnix, mounting the Windows partition, running ntfsfix to resolve errors, navigating to the SAM folder, and using chntpw to clear the password and unlock the administrator account.

Uploaded by

Abdur Rahman Sarker (Abid)
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
78 views5 pages

Reset Windows Server Administrator Password

This document provides steps to reset the administrator password on Windows Server using a Finnix rescue CD. It involves booting Finnix, mounting the Windows partition, running ntfsfix to resolve errors, navigating to the SAM folder, and using chntpw to clear the password and unlock the administrator account.

Uploaded by

Abdur Rahman Sarker (Abid)
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 5

Reset Windows Server Administrator Password

vultr.com/docs/reset-windows-server-administrator-password

There are times when you have forgotten your local administrator password on Windows
and need to have it reset. It is easily possible to reset this password if you had created a
Password Reset Disk beforehand, but that's not usually the case. In this article, we're
going through a step by step guide on how to reset your password on Windows Server.

This guide is applicable for all versions of Windows including:

Windows Server 2008


Windows Server 2008 R2
Windows Server 2012
Windows Server 2012 R2
Windows Server 2016

Introduction
We will be using a Finnix rescue CD to recover the administrator password. Finnix is a
fully self-contained Linux LiveCD that is based on Debian. It is very useful for repairing
hard drives, boot records, and recovering systems. For more information on Finnix, see
the Linux repair guide.

Reset administrator password

Boot with Finnix


Once your machine boots, you will see the Finnix boot menu. The option "Boot Finnix
(64-bit)" will be selected. Press "enter" to boot 64-bit Finnix.

1/5
After a moment, Finnix will provide you with a terminal where you can input commands.

Mount your Windows drive


Now we need to mount the partition that has your Windows Server installation on it. Use
the fdisk -l command to determine the partition device.

fdisk -l

An easy way to determine the partition device is to compare the size of the partition
device to the size of your Vultr VM. For example, I have a 45GB Windows Server 2012
plan. The output of fdisk -l shows me that /dev/vda2 has a size of 44.9G . Therefore
/dev/vda2 is the partition that I'm interested in; note that yours may be named
differently.
2/5
Mount the partition.

mkdir /mnt/win
mount /dev/vda2 /mnt/win

You will likely get the error shown below saying "The disk contains an unclean file system
(0, 0).". Don't worry, that's normal.

We can run the ntfsfix command to resolve this error. Replace /dev/vda2 with your
partition.

ntfsfix /dev/vda2

Now you can mount the partition again.

mount /dev/vda2 /mnt/win

3/5
Clear the password
Navigate to the C:\Windows\System32\config folder.

cd /mnt/win/Windows/System32/config/

Edit the Administrator account with chntpw .

chntpw SAM

4/5
Here you may clear the administrator password and also unlock the account. The
account becomes locked when you try to login too many times before attempting to
reset the password. Follow these steps.

Type 1 - This clears the Administrator password.


Type 2 - This unlocks the Administrator account.
Type q - This quits chntpw .
Type y - Confirms "yes" for "Write hive files?".

Unmount the partition.

cd ~
umount /mnt/win

The administrator password has been reset.

5/5

You might also like