My landlord came to me with his wife’s laptop, which is running Windows Vista. She bought it a few months ago and was just getting around to really using it. Trouble is, she forgot what her password was, and was unable to access her Windows profile, and her data.

I remember attempting to reset or remove the Windows password in 2000 and XP, but didn’t succeed and ended up having to format and reinstall Windows just so I could use it again. I did not want to put my landlord through that.

After two hours worth of research, I ran into a few paid-for (shareware) programs, a couple of which were command-line based (DOS). They didn’t work, at least not for me. Windows still asked for a password. Two of them were GUI, so they just have a few checkboxes, and click ‘next’ a few times, then reboot.

The program I found to work, and easily reset the Windows password. It’s called PC Login Now. It’s open-source, so it’s free.

You simply download the ISO file, and use a program such as CD Burner XP Pro to burn the file contained in the ISO to a CD or DVD and it’s bootable, and is able to reset and remove the passwords of Windows accounts.

It’s a tool that’s a must in my computer repair arsenal, and I suggest any computer user do the same.