If you don’t do serious work on your computer, or you have not used your computer for a while, or you just get old, you’ll easily forget your password. How to reset your Windows 10 password? I mean, you almost definitely forget or never recall the password resetting settings when you created your account such as filling some questions/answers. You almost definitely have not created a recovery disk or something like that. Don’t be depressed. As long as you own the computer, you have chance to recover/reset the password without losing anything. You don’t need to reinstall/reset Windows 10. You don’t need to rollback to a restore point. You don’t need a recovery image. All you need to do is:
Booting your PC from another OS. You may install another Windows 10 or Windows PE onto a USB drive and boot it from that USB drive. Note that don’t detach the drive where your old Windows 10 is installed and whose password is forgotten.
Browse to the directory like H:\Windows\System32 on the volume of the old Windows 10 you forget the password. You will find a file called sethc.exe in that directory. This file is executed when you enter shift key 5 times continuously on login screen. Now rename the file so that we can copy cmd.exe(also in H:\Windows\System32) to that name. You may get this error when doing that: “You’ll need to provide administrator permission to rename this file”. Click “Continue”, you’ll get another “File Access Denied” error:” You require permission from TrustedInstaller to make changes to this file”. Clicking “Try Again” does not help. You may feel confused since you are logged in as an administrator or a user with the administrator privileges. Why cann’t you get the permission to rename sethc.exe? Right-click on sethc.exe and click “Properties”, click “Security” tab and you’ll see all groups/users including administrators have only “Read&execute” and “Read” permissions to that file. You may want to click “Edit…” to modify the permissions for you(the current user) but you’ll be disappointed to see that the Allow/Deny checkboxes are grayed out. You cannot edit the permissions on this file. The reason is the owner of sethc.exe is TrustedInstaller(not you). So, you need to change the owner first. Click “Advanced” on the “Security” tab, you’ll find the owner of sethc.exe is TrustedInstaller. Click “Change” besides “TrustedInstaller” and click “Advanced…” on the popped up “Select User or Group” window, then click “Find Now” on the newly popped up window, you can find a list of users/groups displayed in the “Search results:” box. Select your user id or Administrators group(if you are in that group), and click “OK” to let you be the owner of sethc.exe. Now you can rename sethc.exe. After that copy cmd.exe to sethc.exe. We are about to disguise cmd.exe as sethc.exe.
Shutdown your computer and plug the usb drive out. We’ll boot the computer from your old Windows of which you forget your password now.
Boot up your old Windows 10. On the login window, press the shift key 5 times quickly. This will bring the cmd window, where you can input the following command to reset your password:
net user youruserid newpassword
Now you can login Windows with the newly set password. Don’t forget to copy the renamed sethc to sethc.exe.
