There are times when you forgot your password to log in to your PC. For this particular problem, there are some tools you can use to recover the password or reset it without reinstalling your windows operating system. These tools are often used by hackers as a “Password Cracker” to crack passwords, so they can illegitimately use the PC, but if you are breaking or unlocking your PC, then this is a legal practice.
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Best Free Windows Password Recovery Tools
You can use different Windows password recovery tools to recover or reset the user or administrator account passwords to log in to Windows. Following are the best free Windows password recovery tools that will work for Windows 10, 8, 7, Vista and XP passwords.
Ophcrack:
Ophcrack is a free Windows password recovery tool. It is undoubtedly the best free Windows cracker tool available. It provides GUI so a user with the necessary awareness of windows can easily use it.
To recover your password, you have to download the zip or iso file and make a bootable CD or flash drive. Now you just have to boot from it, and you will recover your lost password without accessing windows. It’ll automatically start, locate the user account and recover the passwords.
Offline NT Password & Registry Editor:
Offline NT Password & Registry Editor is a small Windows password removal tool. It does not recover the password instead it will remove it. So you can classify it as a Windows password reset tool.
It works in the same way as the Ophcrack; you have to burn the CD or Flash drive with the bootable image of the tool and then boot from it. You can log in to your windows account without entering a password after running the program.
Kon-Boot:
Kon-Boot is another tool which will quickly avoid the login process of Windows-based operating systems. If you do not know your password, still you can log in to your PC without overwriting your old password.
To use it, you just have to burn the program to disc or flash drive and boot from it. It’s fast, tiny and easy to use. If you have problems using any other windows password recovery tools you can give this tool a try.
Cain & Abel:
Cain & Abel is a free Windows password recovery tool. It allows easy recovery of different types of passwords using different password techniques such as cracking password using a dictionary, Brute-Force, etc.
Cain & Abel requires access to windows under an administrator account, so it cannot be used for cracking or hacking other user PC’s password.
LCP:
LCP is another free windows password recovery software. Like Cain & Abel, it also needs access to a user account on PC, so you have to download and install it inside of Windows.
It can be little apprehensive to the users who are new to password recovery tools, so you have to have some preceding knowledge to tackle and avoid any other problem with your PC.
Trinity Rescue Kit:
Trinity Rescue Kit is a free Linux based tool whose primary functions are recovery and repairing for Windows operating systems. It is a collection of tools, one of which is password recovery. You can quickly reset Windows passwords. It has a menu interface which is simple and easy instead of GUI.
You can burn it on CD or USB drive and boot from it to recover the password.
John the Ripper:
John the Ripper is a free software distributed in source code form. If you want to use a commercial product, you can use its pro version. It is operated with CLI (command line interface) so only those users having a reasonable knowledge of commands can use it efficiently. You also have to download the collection of wordlists for use with John the Ripper. It includes lists of common passwords, wordlists for 20+ human languages, etc.
