There are times when you have forgotten your local administrator password on Windows and need to have it reset. It is easily possible to reset this password if you had created a Password Reset Disk beforehand, but that's not usually the case. In this article, we're going through a step by step guide on how to reset your password on Windows Server.
This guide is applicable for all versions of Windows including:
- Windows Server 2008
- Windows Server 2008 R2
- Windows Server 2012
- Windows Server 2012 R2
Introduction
We will be using a Finnix rescue CD to recover the administrator password. Finnix is a fully self-contained Linux LiveCD that is based on Debian. It is very useful for repairing hard drives, boot records, and recovering systems. For more information on Finnix, see Linux repair guide.
Reset administrator password
Obtain and upload Finnix
First, we need to upload a copy of Finnix. Vultr allows you to upload an ISO by providing its URL. You may get the latest version of Finnix online https://www.finnix.org/Download Copy the URL to the Finnix ISO that you want to use.
Now we need to upload the ISO. Navigate to the management panel of your instance and paste the URL in the upload field.
