In this manual, we are going to teach you how to enter a Windows 7 and earlier system without having to know the administrator password. We will use different methods to achieve this.
Thanks to a security flaw, still unsolved, in Windows 7 and earlier, it is possible to remove a user’s password to access their account and files without much complication. There are several utilities that allow us to do this, but the one we are going to use is one that is included on the Hiren’s Boot CD.
Hiren’s Boot CD is a live-cd of essential utilities for solving computer problems. Useful for problems with the boot, partitions, bios, startup and others, it has many useful programs, as is the case of user password removal in Windows. We can see a list of the applications available on the official website .
One of the applications that this CD includes is called WindowsGate 1.1 and it is used to eliminate the Windows password verification , useful when you forget a user’s password to be able to access it quickly and without problems.
In order to remove the password, we must first download and burn the Hiren’s Boot CD. Once recorded, start the computer with it, and a menu will appear with all the applications that the live-cd has.
We must select and start the option “Min Windows XP” to access a Windows XP system on live-cd.
Once started, we will see a desktop with a series of pre-installed applications. We must execute Windowsgate 1.1, for this, we must click on the start menu, called “Start” and then, at the top, on HBCD Menu .
Once there, we will click on the «Programs» menu and then on passwords & keys / Windows login / WindowsGate and the application will be executed.
The WindowsGate application will be executed as you can see in this image:
We select from the list the operating system for which we want to disable password verification, we mark the “msv1_0.dll patch” box and a message will appear indicating that it has been done correctly. “Logon password validation is OFF”.
Once this is done, we can restart our computer, remove the hiren’s boot cd, and boot into our system. When you ask us for the password of the administrator, or of any user, we can enter the one we want, or leave it blank, the system will access that user without problems. Once this tutorial has been followed, we can access the Windows account for which we had forgotten the password.
Delete a specific user’s Windows key
Another way to access a Windows system if we have forgotten the password is by deleting it for a specific user , but it still has validation for other users. For this, we can use the application « Offline NT / 2000 / XP / Vista / 7 Password Changer «, included in the Hiren’s Boot CD. This application does not need Mini Windows XP to work as it boots from command prompt.
To access it, we must select the Password Reset menu, and once there, « Offline NT / 2000 / XP / Vista / 7 Password Changer «.
And when you press, the program will load. The first option it asks us is to select the partition where we have Windows installed. In our case we have 2 partitions, one for BOOT and another for Windows 7, we select the Windows 7 one and press enter.
Next, it will ask us about the location of the log file. It usually detects it automatically, so by pressing enter we can continue with the process.
The program will load the necessary registry entries and ask us what we want to do. We select option 1 by default, and continue.
We select the default option ” Edit user data and password “.
Now the users available in our system will appear, we select the one we want to reset the password, in our case, the administrator “ruvelro” and press enter.
Some options will appear under the ” user edit menu ” menu , among which we can highlight option 1, which establishes a blank password, and option 2, which will allow us to change the password and set the one we want. We select the option we want to perform, in our case 1, to remove the password and access the system without it.
We will be able to see a message that indicates Password Cleared and other options. What we must do now is exit the program. To do this, in the first selection window we will press! To exit the user selection and then select «q» to exit the program. It will ask us if we want to apply the changes made (password removal), press “y” and enter, and the changes will be applied.
We will see a message that says ” Edit Complete “. This means that the changes have been made successfully, so we can now restart our machine, remove the Hiren’s boot CD and enter Windows without any problem, selecting the user whose password we have removed
Kon bot
Another alternative we have to login to a system for which we have forgotten the password is to use another application that is included in Hiren’s boot, called Kon Bot .
This application allows us to login to the system, as administrator, but without changing the password or disabling validation like the other methods.
Kon-Bot is compatible with:
- Microsoft Windows XP 32Bit / 64Bit
- Microsoft Windows Server 2003 32Bit / 64Bit
- Microsoft Windows Server 2008 32Bit / 64Bit
- Microsoft Windows Vista 32Bit / 64Bit
- Microsoft Windows 7 32Bit / 64Bit
- Microsoft Windows 8 32Bit / 64Bit (BIOS version, not EFI)
- Some Linux systems.
To use it, we must start our computer with Hiren’s boot and select the «Password Reset» section and there select Kon-Bot.
An ascii animation will open, in which we must press enter to continue.
And the program will begin to patch the necessary files, to then start the operating system as administrator, without having to do anything else.
With this, we can now access our system without the need for a password.