chntpw to the rescue

Linux Windows Security

My problem

I got a Windows 8.1 PC and wanted to reset the password for local administrator account. A reset was not successful so I switched to using a Linux live image.

To do this I downloaded an Ubuntu 16.04 Desktop image and wrote it to a flash drive using RosaImageWriter (see link list below) and booted the machine with it. I downloaded the deb package and installed it using sudo dpkg -i Downloads/chntpw_1.0-1_amd64.deb.

After mounting the Windows partition I navigated to <mount point>/Windows/System32/config and started sudo chntpw -i SAM.

ROSA Image Writer

http://wiki.rosalab.ru/en/index.php/Blog:ROSA_Planet/ROSA_Image_Writer

Available for Linux and Windows.

deb package

https://ubuntu.pkgs.org/16.04/ubuntu-universe-amd64/chntpw_1.0-1_amd64.deb.html