Active Directory user account – Password Recovery https://www.top-password.com/blog Provide useful password recovery tricks, guides and software Sat, 13 Oct 2012 00:43:10 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.1 Active Directory Password Recovery https://www.top-password.com/blog/active-directory-password-recovery/ Sat, 13 Oct 2012 00:40:46 +0000 http://www.top-password.com/blog/?p=1337 How to recover Active Directory password when you forgot it? It is not so simple to recover the Active Directory user password than Windows local account. You can use the freeware Ophcrack to reset your forgotten Windows local account password but it doesn’t work for Active Directory user account due to its superior security characteristics.

Actually, you can also recover forgotten Active Directory password easily if you pick up the right solution. Here we’ll recommend the Password Recovery Bundle, which allows you to create a bootable recovery CD or USB and use it to recover Active Directory password on Windows Server 2008/2003/2000. Let’s see how it works!

Active Directory Password Recovery Procedure:

  1. Download and install Password Recovery Bundle on another computer that you can log in.
  2. Prepare a blank CD and insert it into the computer. If your computer doesn’t come with CD drive, you can use USB flash drive instead.
  3. Launch Password Recovery Bundle and click on Windows Password button, it will display the ISO burning window.

  4. Choose your CD you’ve plugged in and then click on Start Burn button to create a bootable recovery CD.
  5. After you have the recovery CD, put it into the CD drive of your domain controller whose password you want to recover.
  6. Turn on the domain controller and have it boot from the recovery CD. You may need to go into BIOS and set CD/DVD as the first boot device.
  7. After booting from the recovery CD, it will load the Windows PE operating system inside the recovery CD and start the Reset Windows Password program.

  8. Choose the Active Directory NTDS.dit database, it will display a list of domain user accounts inside the NTDS.dit database.
  9. Choose a domain user account from the list, then click on Reset Password button, the program will replace the forgotten/unknown password with a new password: Password123.

Take out the recovery CD and reboot your domain controller. You can then log in to your Active Directory user account with the new password. The Active Directory password recovery solution works on both 32-bit and 64-bit domain controller.

]]> How to Unlock Active Directory User Account without Even Logging in https://www.top-password.com/blog/unlock-active-directory-user-account/ Fri, 28 Sep 2012 02:30:55 +0000 http://www.top-password.com/blog/?p=1238 It’s always a pain: You’ve been away on vacation and can’t remember your user account password on Active Directory server.  You try nearly all possible passwords, and then you remember. But by then it’s too late.  Your Active Directory account is locked due to too many invalid password attempts.  If you can still log in to domain controller with other administrator account, you can unlock the locked-out Active Directory user account easily while logging in.

But what if there is only one administrator account on your domain controller which is locked out? Or all of Active Directory user accounts are locked out all of a sudden? You may think there is no other options than reinstalling the server. Here we’re going to show you an easy and effective way to unlock Active Directory user account without even logging in.

How to Unlock Active Directory User Account without Even Logging in?

With Reset Windows Password utility you can easily reset forgotten domain user account passwords and unlock Active Directory user account on Windows Server 2008/2003/2000. It can help you get rid of the frustration of being locked out in just a few steps. Basically the steps involves burning a Live CD on another accessible computer, and then boot up your domain controller with the Live CD so you can unlock Active Directory user account without even logging in.

  1. Download the Reset Windows Password utility. Unzip the download file and you’ll get a ResetWindowsPwd.iso file.
  2. Burn the ISO image file to a blank CD using any burning program (we recommend BurnCDCC) that can burn ISO images.
  3. After you have the Live CD, bring it to boot off your domain controller whose password you want to unlock. You’ll see that the computer will load some files inside the Live CD and launch the Reset Windows Password utility.
  4. Click on the “Reset Active Directory Password” option, then choose the Active Directory ntds.dit database file from the drop-down list. It will display the domain user accounts and you can find which account is locked out.
  5. Choose a user account and then click on the Reset Password button, it will unlock your domain account and also change the password to a new one: Password123.
  6. Now remove the Live CD and restart the computer, you can then log in to your Active Directory user account with the new password.

The unlocking procedure takes you less than two minutes. While you may be out of luck if you spend a lot of time to search tips and tricks to unlock Active Directory user account. Most of Windows password recovery software can recover passwords only for Windows local account. None of them can work with domain controller and allow you to unlock Active Directory user account.

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