Change Your Windows Password Without Knowing It

As you may already know, when using Windows XP if you wish to change the password of a user on the system, you will need to know the current password for that user.  This technique is commonly implemented in order to stop people from arbitrarily changing other peoples passwords.  Sometimes, however, this little function can be a nuisance, like in the case where someone with an account on your system forgets their old password.  While I am sure there are plenty of methods for “recovering” Windows passwords, wouldn’t it be a lot simpler if you could simply overwrite the old one with a new one using software that is already on your system?  The answer is obviously yes.  Luckily there is a way to do this.  To begin, you MUST have an account with administrator privileges and you MUST be logged into an account with these privileges.  This will probably be the case for most people, unless you are a kid reading this who’s parents are incredibly smart and watchful.  If you know that you have this type of account, you can go ahead and change either your password or someone else’s on your system using the following steps:

1. Click the START button, followed by RUN (usually located to the upper right of START). 
2. When the RUN box appears, simply enter “CMD” without the quotes.  A new Command Prompt window will appear. 
3. In this window type the following command without quotes “net user USERNAME PASSWORD” where USERNAME stands for the name of the user on your system who’s password you will be changing and PASSWORD is the new password. 
4. Hit ENTER
5. If you did everything correct, it should say “The command completed successfully”.
6. Exit Command Prompt.

Your user will now have a new password based upon what you just set.  This can be incredibly helpful if you need access to the original administrator account on your system but have since forgotten the password or you have kids who constantly forget their own Windows password.  Please use this responsibly.  I take no responsibility for you locking yourself out of your system or anything else you may screw up!

EDIT: If your username contains one or more spaces, you must put it in quotes.

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