There are lots of free Windows password crackers available, but we've found that Ophcrack is the most effective. Ophcrack can be run from Windows, Linux or Live CD and it uses rainbow tables to find passwords. The following tutorial explains how to install and boot Ophcrack from a portable USB drive to recover Windows 7 password, in case you forgot the administrator login password.
- Windows Password Key, the best Ophcrack alternative, can easily forgotten Windows administrator/user password and Microsoft account password for Windows 10/8.1/8/7/Vista/XP. Similar to Ophcrack, this app also allows you to write a recovery disk on a CD, a DVD, or a USB drive. Once you have created the disk, you can use it to boot your PC from.
- If you have been working on Windows Vista, you would have noticed that you don't always get administrator access, even though your account type may be 'Administrator'. The reason is that the true Administrator account is hidden by default. This article will tell you how to enable it.
- This article also describes how to run a program as an administrator in Windows Vista. More Information User Account Control (UAC) is a new feature that helps prevent malicious programs, also known as 'malware,' from damaging a system.
- Okay, so basically, evidently I have this inability to comprehend why Ophcrack and similar programs don't work on windows vista's passwords. More specifically, it got the non-administrative.
Update: Also read Offline enable the Windows 8 administrator account. Author Recent Posts Michael PietroforteMichael Pietroforte is the founder and editor in chief of 4sysops. He has more than 35 years of experience in IT management and system administration. Latest posts by Michael Pietroforte (see all) Author and member of the year 2019 – Why DevOps still doesn't rule the.
1. Download Ophcrack
The first thing we will need to do is download the CD image from Ophcrack's official website. Ophcrack Live CD is available in two versions, one for Vista/Windows 7 and one for Windows XP. To crack Windows 7 password, you need to download the Ophcrack Vista/7 Live CD.
2. Burn Ophcrack to USB
After downloading the Ophcrack ISO, burn it to your USB drive using the freeware ISO2Disc. Note that just copy the files directly to your USB drive and it won't work. If you don't have a USB drive, then putting Ophcrack on a CD is your only option.
3. Boot from Ophcrack Live USB
Netviewer 2.0 dvr software, free download. Once you have created a Ophcrack Live USB, you will then need to restart your computer and set your BIOS settings to boot from removable drive first. If you don't know how to do this you can check out this article: How to Set Your Computer to Boot from CD or USB Drive.
When it is booting from the USB drive, Ophcrack will begin loading and eventually present you with four options, graphic mode and text mode. We are going to use graphic mode since it is the simplest option, so highlight 'Ophcrack graphic mode - automatic' and press Enter.
4. Recover Windows 7 Password
Once Ophcrack has booted completely, it will locate the user accounts on your Windows 7 system and begin cracking their passwords. The process is automatic - you don't usually need to type or click anything. When the passwords are displayed on screen, write them down. Now just boot back into Windows and you can login with the recovered password!
With the free rainbow tables included in Ophcrack Live CD you will not be able to crack every password, but the paid tables range from $100 to $1000 so you may be better off just resetting your password with PCUnlocker.
Ready to try or buy?
![Ophcrack vista tables Ophcrack vista tables](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/VpEagxSWzX0/maxresdefault.jpg)
- Buy PCUnlocker Professional
- Download PCUnlocker
Windows 7
Related Articles
Forgot your Windows password? Need to recover/get rid of it? One solution is using Ophcrack. However, Ophcrack has a few problems with it. For one, it can only crack passwords which are 14 characters or less in length. Secondly, any passwords that have extensive use of special symbols Ophcrack won’t work on. Thirdly, Ophcrack won’t crack all passwords if you are using the free tables; and if you use the paid tables, they are insanely huge in size. Lastly, Ophcrack takes quite a while to crack a password. Luckily, if you don’t need to keep your lost password the same – and really, if you forgot it the first time around you probably won’t want to keep the same one to forget it again – there’s an alternative to using Ophcrack: Offline NT Password & Registry Editor.
Image Credit: One and Two
Offline NT Password & Registry Editor Overview
Offline NT Password & Registry Editor (ONTP&RE) is a tool to use when you forgot/lost your Windows account password and you don’t need to keep it the same (i.e. you are open to changing it). Simply put, ONTP&RE allows users to manually change the passwords for Windows accounts. (ONTP&RE is also a registry editor.) No passwords are a match for ONTP&RE – it allows you to destroy and replace any password for any Windows account.
Preparing to destroy passwords
Just like Ophcrack, ONTP&RE runs from a Linux boot disc, so you need to download and burn ISO onto a disc before you can use it. So download the ONTP&RE disc image and burn it to a disc using your operating system’s built in ISO burner (if your OS has one) or a third party program like ImgBurn or Ashampoo Burning Studio 2010 Advanced.
If you prefer bootable USB drives over bootable disc, you can use XBoot to create a bootable USB of ONTP&RE.
Destroying passswords
Once you have created the bootable media – whether it is a disc or USB drive – you need to boot off it. So insert the disc into the computer, or plug in the USB drive, and restart your computer. Depending on your computer BIOS settings, you may be automatically booted into ONTP&RE after reboot; or you may be required to tap an F key (like F8 or F10 or F12) during the BIOS screen and manually tell the computer you want to boot off the disc/USB drive; or you may need to enable to booting off disc/USB drive from your BIOS before you can do any of the previously mentioned actions.
Once you have booted into ONTP&R, you should seem something like this:
Once at this screen most people just need to hit Enter on their keyboard to proceed to the next step. Dramatical murder fuwanovel. If, however, you are having problems with ONTP&RE, you may need to type in one of the custom commands (to disable USB, not load drivers, etc.) listed before hitting Enter.
After you hit Enter as just discussed, ONTP&RE will do a bunch of loading and will end up at the following screen:
At this screen you will need to pick your Windows partition. For most computers just hitting Enter will work fine because ONTP&RE automatically selects a suggested partition, which is typically the Windows partition. If you find, however, that ONTP&RE has the wrong partition selected, you will need to change it before hitting Enter.
Next you will be shown a screen that lists your Windows accounts:
Enable Administrator Account Windows Vista Ophcrack Download
Accounts that don’t have a lock are generally the ones you care about. Verify the name of the account you want to crack, type it in, and hit Enter:
Now you need to modify the account you selected. To remove the password (i.e. make the account have no password), type 1. To changethe password, type 2. To make the user an administrator, press 3. To “enable” a “locked” account – like Adminstrator – type 4. If you find you have mistakenly selected the wrong account, or you changed your mind about modifying the account, type q to quit and go back to the user selection screen. (Be sure to hit Enter after typing in your command.):
In the screenshot above you can see that I selected to remove the password associated with my Locutus account. I recommend removing the password as opposed to changing the password because you can always change the password once you have regained access to your Windows account by removing the password; it is a bit more user-friendly changing your password from within Windows itself than from within ONTP&RE.
Once you have modified one account, you can go back and modify other accounts or modify the same account again, if you want. To do so simply type in the account name you want to modify, hit Enter, and repeat the previously mentioned steps. If you don’t want to modify any more accounts, type ! and hit Enter to go back to the “main menu”.
Back at the main menu you can type 1 to go back to editing accounts, 9 for the registry editor, or q to quit. Unless you want to go back and edit other accounts or access the registry editor (make sure you know what you are doing if you use the registry editor), type q and hit Enter to quit ONTP&RE. It will ask you if you want to savethe changes you just made:
To save your changes, hit y and Enter. You will be asked if you want ONTP&RE to try to apply your changes a second time in case the first time failed. If you want to have ONTP&RE conduct a second pass, type y; otherwise type n to exit. Hit Enter:
Last but not least, simply press Ctrl+Alt+Delete to reboot your computer and get back into Windows. Depending on your computer you may also need to remove the disc/USB drive.
Wait for your computer to reboot and you should now be able to login to your Windows account:
Click on the account that you modified and login! If you removed the password there will be no password to enter. If you changed the password you need to enter the new password.
Conclusion
![Windows Windows](https://www.windowspasswordsrecovery.com/images/knowledge/local-administrator-account-win7/local-security-policy.png)
Using ONTP&RE to remove or change passwords is a great, easy, and quick way to deal with forgotten Windows account passwords; and if you combine it with the previously-mentioned Ophcrack using XBoot, you can actually save yourself a disc too (or put them both on a single USB drive). Although there are probably easier ways to modify forgotten Windows passwords, using ONTP&RE is the one way I know works with all passwords. You can grab Offline NT Password & Registry Editor from the following links:
Version reviewed: v100627
Supported OS: Windows NT/2k/XP/Vista/Win7
Download size: 3.6MB
[Direct download]
[Download page]