Resetting Windows 10 Passwords

4Apr/180

Resetting Windows 10 Passwords

Sure, this isn't something a normal person should be doing, but this scenario required it. I'd just fixed a friend's laptop, or I thought I had, until I got a call 2 weeks later saying there were password issues again. Instantly I thought I'd screwed the BIOS up, but this time it turned out to be an entirely different error!

Oh shit... who the hell are LizerdSquad? Is that a typo? Not many google results for this cute little hack. I asked my friend if he'd opened any suspicious emails lately and body-language told me 'yes'. Anyway... google to the rescue. Top Password has a good article on using Kali Linux to reset such a password.

I found a blank USB key and created a bootable drive of the base Kali Linux i386 'light' image.

Booting was easy enough... ESC to select the USB key as the boot device.

Or was it? After choosing 'forensic' mode, the system tried to boot until I was simply presented with a blank screen. Seems my video driver isn't supported? Fail-safe mode worked... but then I didn't have the chntpw command on the terminal! No amount of 'su' or 'sudo' got the tool. Does the 'forensic' mode mount other disks to provide the toolkit?

Trying a different approach...

Keep fighting Kali? Better just use this: A bootable ISO of the chntpw tool. And it worked perfectly! I burned it to the USB key using the 'MBR' option via the same tool as above. From startup, it booted straight into console mode. Whilst loading it even went further to find and diagnose the Windows partition.

This laptop has a single user and a simple windows setup, so the default options were all correct already! Very nicely programmed. I chose through to clear the password and ... bingo!