{"id":14446,"date":"2025-09-05T18:39:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-06T01:39:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=14446"},"modified":"2025-06-19T18:45:19","modified_gmt":"2025-06-20T01:45:19","slug":"reset-a-forgotten-windows-7-password","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=14446","title":{"rendered":"Reset a forgotten Windows 7 password"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/RCInsJ6BLjY?si=1a2wUVjed_kpSpm0\">https:\/\/youtu.be\/RCInsJ6BLjY?si=1a2wUVjed_kpSpm0<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/@TipsNNTricks\">TipsNNTricks<\/a> shows how to bypass the login password without a recovery CD or without any software. It does require physical access to the system (or a way to trigger a recovery boot); but this really helps if you found an old hard drive or system and can&#8217;t remember the password from eons ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You first boot in recovery mode. You then gain access to the drive by opening a debug message which opens notepad. This allows you to do File&#8230;Open and look at all the files on the C drive. You rename the &#8216;c:\\windows\\system32\\sethc.exe&#8217; to something else (bak or whatever), then make a copy of cmd.exe and name it sethc.exe in the same directory as the original sethc.exe. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When windows reboots, you can then press the shift key 5 times to trigger hotkeys (sethc.exe), and it will open a cmd prompt instead. Then use net use to reset the password for your accounts and you can log in. Clever!<br><br><br><br><br><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>https:\/\/youtu.be\/RCInsJ6BLjY?si=1a2wUVjed_kpSpm0 TipsNNTricks shows how to bypass the login password without a recovery CD or without any software. It does require physical access to the system (or a way to trigger a recovery boot); but this really helps if you found an old hard drive or system and can&#8217;t remember the password from eons ago. You first boot in recovery mode. You then gain access to the drive by opening a debug message which opens notepad. This allows you to do&#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"><a class=\"btn btn-default\" href=\"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=14446\"> Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">  Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cool","category-technicalproblemsolutions"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4WECr-3L0","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14446"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14446\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14447,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14446\/revisions\/14447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}