Resetting Windows Password With Kali Linux

So I often have to ‘break’ into VMs when migrating them. I put the word break into quotation marks because I’m doing it for the company… Which leads me to this post, I wanted to show you how I go about resetting Windows password with Kali Linux.

This should only be done ethically and legally!

What I mean by that is, make sure you have the right to access the machine and have approval from the owner to reset the password. Fun times ahead!

I’ve also written this on my website.

Why?

What do you mean why? It’s fairly simple!

This most often comes up for me if a user has forgotten the password. Most commonly, because they haven’t used the system for a while, or they have an auto-complete function which fails once the system has been migrated to a new host.

Why use Kali Linux? Well because it is the most robust method I’ve found for quickly resetting Windows passwords. It has a nice built in utility for this, along with a bunch of other Windows tools.

You can also reset Windows passwords using the Windows installer, or by using Ubuntu. However, both of those methods have their own downsides which make Kali my favourite.

Lets hop in!🦘

Resetting Windows Password With Kali Linux

First, mount the Kali Linux live boot ISO to the VM. I’ll be using 2021.2-live-amd64…