Today we were asked how to reset a Windows user password (in this case the administrator account for a Windows Home Server 2011 install) without knowing the original password. The user had a logged-in Administrator session but had typo’d their password twice successfully during the install and was not keen on reinstalling then repeating the several hours of setup they had just completed.
If this happens to you, open up a CMD window with Administrator privileges (in the WHS 2011 example the CMD window automatically has these) and type the following:
net user [username] *
In this case:
net user administrator *
You will be prompted to enter a new password without having to provide the existing password first. To get a list of the users on the system, you can run:
net users
Use this for good, not evil!