How to Reset a Windows 11 Password (No Reinstall, Any Account)

To reset a forgotten Windows 11 password, the method depends on the kind of account you have. If you sign in with a Microsoft account, use the “I forgot my password” link on the sign-in screen. For a local account, answer your security questions, or boot from a Windows 11 installer USB and use the offline Command Prompt method to run net user. A second administrator account can reset it directly.

Applies to: Windows 11 (23H2, 24H2, 25H2) and Windows 10 (22H2) | Last updated: August 28, 2026

Key Takeaways

• A second administrator account on the same PC is the quickest fix. That person can change your password in Settings > Accounts, or run net user in an admin Command Prompt. Check for one before anything else.
• A Microsoft account resets without booting from anything. Click the “I forgot my password” link under the password box, or reset from your phone at account.live.com/password/reset.
• A local account with security questions resets from the sign-in screen. Type a wrong password once, click Reset password, and answer the questions you set when you created the account.
• A local account with no security questions needs the offline method: boot a Windows 11 installer USB, swap utilman.exe for cmd.exe in System32, then run net user from the Accessibility button at sign-in.
• On clean installs of Windows 11 24H2, the drive is often encrypted, and the offline method hits a BitLocker recovery key wall first. Get the key from your Microsoft account before you start.

Quick Steps

1. Check whether the PC has a second administrator account that can sign in and change your password.
2. Microsoft account: click “I forgot my password” under the password box, or reset from another device at account.live.com/password/reset.
3. Local account with security questions: enter a wrong password, click Reset password, and answer your questions.
4. Local account with no security questions: create a Windows 11 installer USB and boot the PC from it.
5. At the first setup screen, press Shift + F10, open Notepad, and use File > Open to browse to the Windows drive.
6. In Windows\System32, rename utilman.exe to utilman.bak, then copy cmd.exe and rename the copy to utilman.exe.
7. Reboot, click the Accessibility button at sign-in, and run net user YourUsername NewPassword.
8. Boot the USB one more time and restore the original utilman.exe so the button behaves normally again.

In This Guide

• Check for another admin account first. The fix people skip past.
• Microsoft account: the “I forgot my password” link. No USB, no command line.
• Local account with security questions. Reset from the sign-in screen.
• Local account, no security questions: the offline reset. The method that always gets you in.
• Before you try it: encryption and what you can lose. The two things to know first.
• Still locked out? A bootable password tool. When nothing above worked.
• Never get stuck like this again. The two-minute setup that turns this into a quick fix.

First, Check for Another Admin Account

The cheapest fix of all is the one people skip past. If there is a second user on this PC and it is an administrator, you do not need any of the tricks in this guide, because that person can just sign in and change your password for you.

Signed in as the admin, they can go to Settings > Accounts, open your account, and set a new password from there. If they are comfortable in the command line, they can right-click Start, open Terminal or Command Prompt as administrator, and run a single command. Microsoft lists changing it from another admin account as one of the supported ways to reset a local account password.

net user YourUsername NewPassword

If you are not sure of the exact account name, run net user on its own first and it lists every account on the PC. So before booting from anything or touching System32, check whether there is another admin login. It saves you the whole rest of this guide.

Microsoft Account: Use the “I Forgot My Password” Link

If you sign in with an email address, so a Microsoft account, this one should be easy, and you do not need to boot from anything. Right there on the sign-in screen, under the password box, there is an “I forgot my password” link. As long as the PC is online at the lock screen, click it and Windows sends a code to your email or phone so you can set a new password.

If that machine will not get online at the sign-in screen, you can do the whole thing from your phone instead. Go to the Microsoft account password reset page, set a new password there, then come back to the PC and sign in with it. There is no installer and no command line involved.

Note: This only works if the account really is a Microsoft account. If the “I forgot my password” link is missing or greyed out, you are on a local account, and the next two sections are for you.

Local Account With Security Questions

This is where a lot of people get stuck, because they are on a local account and there is no website to go to. If you set up security questions when you made that account, though, you are still fine and you do not need a USB either.

Type a wrong password once, and under the box you will get a Reset password link. Click that, and Windows asks the security questions you picked when you created the account. Answer them, set a new password right there, and sign in. Microsoft documents this same Reset password and security-questions flow for local accounts.

If you have never set those questions up and you can still get in, it is worth doing now so a future lockout is a two-minute job. You will find it under Settings > Accounts > Sign-in options > Password. If it is a local account with no security questions and you are already locked out, that Reset password link does nothing, and you need the offline method next.

Local Account, No Security Questions: The Offline Reset

This is the method that always gets you in. You will need a Windows 11 installer on a USB drive, then you boot the PC from it. If you do not have one yet, my guide on how to download the Windows 11 ISO and make a bootable USB covers that part.

Boot from the USB, and on that very first language screen, press Shift and F10. A Command Prompt window opens. Type notepad and press Enter, and a Notepad window opens. This sounds like a strange detour, and the reason for it is that Notepad’s File > Open dialog gives you a proper file browser to find the right drive with.

In Notepad, click File, then Open. Browse to This PC and check which drive is the actual Windows drive, because in this environment it often is not C. Open that drive, go into the Windows folder, and set the file type box at the bottom right to show all files rather than just text files, so the programs become visible.

Now go into the System32 folder. Find a file called utilman.exe, right-click it, and rename it to make a backup, for example utilman.bak. Then find cmd.exe, copy it, and rename that copy to utilman.exe. You have now put Command Prompt in place of the Accessibility tool. Close everything and reboot back into Windows normally, letting it start from the drive again rather than the USB.

At the sign-in screen, down in the corner, there is the Accessibility button. Because of the swap you just did, clicking it opens a Command Prompt instead of the accessibility options. In that window, type your reset command, press Enter, and the password is changed. Sign in with the new one.

net user YourUsername NewPassword

One last step that matters: boot the USB one more time, browse back to System32 the same way, and put the original utilman.exe back (delete the cmd copy and rename utilman.bak to utilman.exe). That returns the Accessibility button to normal so it behaves itself again.

I will be honest with you: this is an old trick, and Microsoft keeps tightening things up. On a work or managed machine it can get blocked. It still worked when I tested it on my current build, but it is not guaranteed on every machine, and the next section explains the one thing that stops it dead.

Before You Try It: Encryption and What You Can Lose

There are two things you have to know before you go down the offline road. The first is encryption. On a lot of newer machines, especially clean installs of Windows 11 24H2 and above, the drive is locked with Device Encryption or BitLocker. Microsoft confirmed that 24H2 turns Device Encryption on by default on clean installs.

If the drive is encrypted, the moment you try to get at it this way, Windows asks for a recovery key first, and without it this method stops dead. That key sits in your Microsoft account, so from your phone you can sign in and grab it before you start. My guide on where the BitLocker recovery key is actually saved walks through finding it, and Microsoft’s own page on finding your BitLocker recovery key lists every place it can be stored.

Warning: Microsoft cannot recreate a lost BitLocker recovery key. If the drive is encrypted and the key was never saved anywhere, the offline reset is not going to help, so find the key first.

The second thing is about encrypted files. Resetting a local password this way, where you never knew the old one, means Windows loses anything you had encrypted with its built-in file encryption, along with any passwords it had saved for you. For most people at home that is nothing at all. If that is you, though, it is good to go in knowing it, because those files cannot be recovered afterwards.

Still Locked Out? A Bootable Password Tool

If none of the methods above worked for you, there is still one more thing to try, and that is a bootable rescue disc called Hiren’s BootCD. You boot the PC from it, select the user account, and click Reset or Unlock, and it clears the password for that account.

The same process works for a Microsoft account on the machine. You select it, click Reset or Unlock, and you get the option to reset the password and convert the account from a Microsoft account to a local account at the same time. Watch the full walkthrough above for the on-screen version of this step.

Never Get Stuck Like This Again

The cleanest way to never be stuck at that sign-in screen again is to set something up ahead of time, while you can still get in. Any one of these turns a lockout into a quick fix instead of a USB-boot job.

• Make a password reset disk. Windows still lets you create a password reset disk for a local account on a USB stick, made in advance, that resets the password with a couple of clicks.
• Keep a spare administrator account on the PC that you rarely use. If the main account locks up, you sign in with the spare and run net user in seconds.
• Set up security questions on any local account, under Settings > Accounts > Sign-in options > Password, so the Reset password link on the sign-in screen actually does something.

If you are weighing up whether to use a local or a Microsoft account in the first place, the trade-offs (including exactly this kind of recovery) are worth reading before you decide. I go through them in my guide on local account versus Microsoft account on Windows. And if you would rather remove the sign-in password entirely on your own PC, my guide on how to remove a password from Windows 10 and 11 covers that.

Note: Only do any of this on a PC that is yours, or one you have been asked to fix for someone. This is here to get people back into their own machines, not into anyone else’s.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Will resetting my Windows 11 password delete my files?

No. Resetting the password leaves the account and everything in it in place, so your files, apps and settings are untouched. The one exception is the offline method on a local account you never knew the password for. That loses anything encrypted with Windows built-in file encryption and any passwords Windows had saved. For most home users there is nothing in that category.

Do these methods work on Windows 10 as well?

Yes. The net user command, the utilman swap, the security-questions reset and the Microsoft account online reset all work the same way on Windows 10 (22H2). Only the on-screen layout of Settings and the sign-in screen looks a little different from Windows 11.

What if Windows asks for a BitLocker recovery key?

That means the drive is encrypted, which is common on clean installs of Windows 11 24H2. Get the recovery key from your Microsoft account at aka.ms/myrecoverykey, or from wherever you saved it, and enter it when prompted. Without the key, the offline reset cannot get at the drive, and Microsoft cannot recreate a lost key for you.

The Accessibility button still opens the normal tool, not Command Prompt. What went wrong?

The rename did not take, or you edited the wrong folder. In the installer environment the Windows drive is often not C, so it is easy to open the wrong drive’s System32. Boot the USB again, confirm you are in the real Windows drive, and check that cmd.exe was copied and renamed to utilman.exe correctly before rebooting.

Can I avoid all of this next time?

Yes, and it takes a couple of minutes. Make a password reset disk while you can still sign in, keep a spare administrator account on the PC, or use a Microsoft account so you always have the online reset to fall back on. Any one of them turns a full lockout into a quick fix.