Windows 7 Professional - How to unlock administrator account

Question

I have a Windows 7 Professional machine with the administrator account disabled, and the local user account is locked out. Is there any way to unlock this machine?

Answer 1

You can wait for the account lockout to expire. This depends on your GPO but these should be the defaults. The default settings are:

• Account Lockout Duration = 30 minutes
• Account lockout threshold = 5 invalid log on attempts
• Reset account lockout countdown after = 30 minutes

Alternatively, you could reset the password if you have to, if you have the legal right to do so.

You can also enable the admin account from the offline NT password and registry editor, which is mentioned in the post linked above about resetting passwords.

To re-enable a disabled account, right click on "My Computer" on the desktop or start menu and choose manage. Under "Local Users and groups" click "Users". Inside "Users" you will see the Administrator account. Double click to bring up properties and un-check the "account is disabled" and close the properties panel. Then right click the administrator user to set the password of your choice.

You may also want to look into creating a password recovery disk. See here

Answer 2

You need to log on first to active administrator account, and your user password is locked, Without a password reset disk, try these Windows password reset tools, Ophcrack, or Windows Password Breaker works well, i used before, could remove password.

Answer 3

kon-boot (in bios have the burned image cd/dvd to boot first) will log you in as administrator then you can do what is needed.

version 1.0 or 1.1 ,I've used both working on passworded Vista machines requested by the owner.

I'm sure this would also work on win7