Learn how to reset your Administrator account password with the Windows customer rescue system.
Requirements
- Microsoft Windows installed on your dedicated server
- At least 16 GB of RAM installed on the server
- Access to the OVHcloud Control Panel
NOTE: This guide is not applicable to the legacy Windows rescue system (WinPE rescue mode); see our rescue mode guide for more information.
If your Windows Server version is out of support, you might no the able to activate the current rescue system for Windows. In this case, you can use an alternative method for resetting the administrator password using the OVHcloud customer rescue system based on Debian.
Topics
- Resetting the admin password using the OVHcloud Windows Customer Rescue System
- Resetting the admin password using OVHcloud rescue mode
Instructions
Resetting the admin password using the OVHcloud Windows Customer Rescue System
- Step 1: Reboot the server into rescue mode
- Step 2: Clear the current password
- Step 3: Reboot the server
Step 1: Reboot the server into rescue mode
The system has to be started in the Windows customer rescue system before the admin password can be changed.
For detailed instructions, please refer to the Windows rescue mode guide.
Step 2: Clear the current password
Connect to your server in Remote Desktop using the credentials provided by email.
Please note that the username for the rescue mode is Administrator.
- If your server uses software RAID on your Windows disk, you have to import your Windows local disk to be able to access it: Follow the instructions in section A below.
- If your server does not use software RAID on your Windows disk, you should be able to directly access the local Windows disk as explained in section B of this guide.
A - Importing your local Windows disk
Access disk management
Right-click the Start menu and select Disk Management.
You can then see the disks and volumes of the server.
Your server's Windows disk is probably Disk 1. You must import it to be able to access it.
Please note that if you have several disk groups, the number of the Windows disk may vary. You may have to import several disks to get the Windows one.
You also have to import the second disk to properly import your software RAID volume.
Import local disks
Right-click Disk 1 and select Online.
Do the same thing for the second disk (Disk 2) to properly import your software RAID volume.
Right-click Disk 2 and select Online.
Disks are now seen as "Dynamic" and "Foreign".
Right-click Disk 1 again and select Import Foreign Disks.
Click OK twice.
You can see that the local disk is now accessible and that the Windows disk is drive (E:) (spreading on two software RAID disks with Mirrored volume type).
In this example, the volume status is "Resynching" because the server was hard-rebooted into rescue mode. This is an expected status and it is not caused by the rescue mode itself.
This will not affect data on the volume and resynchronization will continue once the server is rebooted on its installed OS.
NOTE: You must then use the path of your local Windows directory (here it is E:\Windows) when browsing to find the "SAM" configuration file below.
You can now reset the password by following the instructions below.
B - Reset the password
To reset passwords, the tool NTPWEdit is required.
Once you are connected via Remote Desktop, open the browser and download it from its official website.
Navigate to the folder where the downloaded ZIP file is located and extract its content.
Next, open the ntpwedit64 executable to start the application.
In this interface, you can manipulate the SAM file to clear the admin user's password.
You must browse the local Windows drive to find your system's SAM file.
Click the more options button (...) to browse the drive containing your server's local Windows folder.
It usually is the Windows (E:\) drive.
Browse to E:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\.
Select and open the SAM file to display the user accounts by clicking Open.
Select the user account "admin" and click on Change password.
In the pop-up window, choose and verify your new password and click OK. Finish by clicking Save changes and Exit.
NOTE: The new password will be accepted regardless of complexity.
Keep in mind that this password will allow remote connection to the server once rebooted on its operating system.
After this, the server needs to be rebooted on the normal operating system.
Step 3: Reboot the server
First, change the netboot back to "Boot from the hard disk" in your OVHcloud Control Panel.
Then restart the server from the Control Panel.
Click the more options ... button near "Status" in the service Status section and click Restart.
Resetting the admin password using OVHcloud rescue mode
The following steps describe the process of changing the local admin password by using the OVHcloud rescue mode (Linux-based).
- Step 1: Rebooting the server into rescue mode
- Step 2: Mounting the system partition
- Step 3: Clearing the current password
- Step 4: Rebooting the server
- Step 5: Setting a new password
Step 1: Rebooting the server into rescue mode
The system has to be started in rescue mode before the admin password can be changed.
For detailed instructions, please refer to the rescue mode guide.
Step 2: Mounting the system partition
Connect to your server via SSH (see our SSH introduction guide if needed). Since it is a Windows server, you will see partitions labeled “Microsoft LDM data”.
Output:
In the example output, “sda4” must be the (file) system partition, as determined by its size. Usually, there is a mirrored second output which in this case would be “/dev/sdbX“. That is because in most cases, the server will have multiple disks with identical partition schemes. For the password reset process, only the first one is important. Next, mount this partition:
Verify the mountpoint:
Output:
In the example above, the operation succeeded. If the mounting failed, you might receive an error message like this:
In this case, use the following command and then try to mount again.
Step 3: Clearing the current password
This step involves manipulating the SAM file with a tool to clear the admin user’s password. Change to the appropriate directory and list the Windows users:
Output:
If the command does not work, install the tool first: apt get install chntpw.
Clear the password for the admin user with the following command. (Choose “Administrator” if “admin” does not exist.)
Output:
Type “1” and press Enter (“↩”). (Make use of option 2 first if there is an “X” next to “Disabled”.)
Type "q" and press Enter to quit the tool. Type "y" when prompted and press Enter.
Step 4: Rebooting the server
First, change the netboot back to Boot from the hard disk in your OVHcloud Control Panel (repeat the instructions in Step 1 but select Boot from the
hard disk).
Back in the CLI, unmount the partition and restart the server with these commands:
Output:
Setting a new password (IPMI/KVM)
In your OVHcloud Control Panel, navigate to the IPMI/KVM tab to open a KVM session.
For a newer version of Windows
There should be a password expiration message in the login interface.
The new password for the admin user must now be entered twice. However, the confirmation field is not yet visible, meaning you need to leave the first field blank, type your new password into the second field, then use the tabulator key ("↹") on the virtual keyboard to switch to the third field ("Confirm password"). Type the password again and click on the arrow to save it.
Click on OK and you will be logged in.
Go further
For more information and tutorials, please see our other Dedicated Server support guides or explore the guides for other OVHcloud products and services.