Forgetting your password to log into Windows can be a very frustrating experience, especiallyif the hint doesn’t help either! There are a couple of programs out there that can help you, but there is one called Login Recovery that caught my eye. The reason it caught my eye is because it’s fairly simple to use even if you are not very techie person. Unlike some of the other programs or methods to crack the Administrator password that change keys in the registry, involve Linux, or ask you to install another copy of Windows, Login Recovery is an easy to use web-based service.
Unfortunately, it’s not free, but you don’t have to pay if you don’t want too. Firstly, they will tell you whether or not the password could be fully decrypted or not. If not, you’re done and you don’t pay anything. If the password was found, then you have the option of paying if you want to see it.
The program is called Login Recovery and it consists of three parts in order to recover your password:
1. First, you download a small application on a working computer and pop in a CD. Run the program and it will automatically create a bootable CD for you by burning an ISO image onto the CD.
2. Once the CD has been created, you take it out and put it in the computer that you are currently locked out of. You need to make sure that the computer is connected to the Internet (probably via Ethernet) and that the computer is set to boot from CD. You can read my previous post on changing the boot order in the BIOS.
3. When the CD loads, it will automatically start looking for the passwords and will try to upload them to their site. If you can’t get an Internet connection on the locked computer, you can save the passwords onto a USB stick.
4. If you have to copy the passwords onto a USB stick, go to Results tab on their website and upload the file that you saved.
If the file was uploaded directly from the locked computer, then don’t worry about step 4. All you have to do now is wait a little while and you’ll get an email when the process is complete. If the username has the word “REVEAL” next to it, that means the password was successfully obtained. At this point, you’ll have to pay and then you’ll be able to see the password.
The Login Recovery process is not guaranteed, especially if the password is complex. I tried it on my computer, but it could not crack it because I have a password that is 10 characters long with upper case, lower case, numbers and symbols! So if you had a password like that, it will be highly unlikely to crack it. However, most people use simple words or short phrases as passwords, so that’s why the site states that almost 98.5% of the passwords submitted were cracked successfully!
The last option, which is pretty nice, is if the word “RESET” is next to the username. That means the password could not be obtained, but it can be reset. This will only work on older versions of Windows, but if you see the word, you’re set. You have to boot from the CD one more time and make sure the computer has an Internet connection.
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