Vista has a feature called The Forgotten Password Wizard. With it, you can create a special disk to reset your password if you forget it. For it to work, you need to act now, while you still know your password!

The wizard will work with some, but not all media. On my machine, it listed my floppy drive (yes, I still have one!), my external USB hard drive, my digital camera and my iPod. Note that the wizard didn’t actually work with the external hard drive (wouldn’t create the file), but it did work perfectly with my camera and my iPod. It also worked when I put my camera card into a ‘thumbdrive adapter’, so it should work with most any flash memory device. My internal hard drives and CD/DVD burners were not listed.

Creating Your Reset Disk

Here’s how to create your password reset disk:

1. Open the Control Panel and click on User Accounts.
   
2. In the User Accounts window, again click on User Accounts (how silly is that?).
   
3. In the User Accounts/User Accounts window click on Create a password reset disk.
   
4. The Forgotten Password Wizard will open. Click Next.
   
5. Choose a disk from the drop down menu (note that the external hard drive I choose in the image didn’t work, but when I connected my camera and iPod, they did both work).
   
6. Type in the password for the current user account. Obviously you’ll want to be logged in as the user you want to save the password for. Also, I’ve seen it mentioned that this will only work for workgroup accounts, which presumably means it won’t work if you are part of a domain (though domain users can have the domain administrator reset their password for them).
   
7. The wizard will generate the key and save it as a file called userkey.psw on the disk you choose. The file is only 2K in size, so don’t worry about loosing all your music or photo space.
   
8. Hit Finish and your work is done. As the dialog box suggests, you don’t want this disk falling into the wrong hands, as it will allow anyone to reset your password. Also, if you ever change your password, you’ll need to run the wizard again to create a new reset disk.
   

Using Your Reset Disk

So what happens now? Well, should you ever forget your password, here’s what to do (I can’t do screen captures of the login windows yet, I guess I need to setup Vista in a VM!).

1. At the Welcome Screen, where you type in your password, if you can’t remember what it is, take a stab at it. If you’re wrong, you’ll see a link below the password box that says Reset password….
2. The Password Reset Wizard will open, click the Next button.
3. You’ll be asked to choose from a drop down menu what drive the password key is on. Choose it and click Next.
4. You’ll be asked to type in a new password, repeat the new password, provide a password hint, and finally click Next
5. You’ll be told the password change succeeded, and that you can still use the same reset disk in the future should you need it. You can then close the wizard and use the new password to login

Note that once the userkey.psw file is created, you can copy it to a different disk and it will still work (I copied mine from my new digital camera’s card to my old cameras card and it worked), it is not linked to the original media. This suggests that you could copy it to a secure internet location, and should you ever need it, use another computer to copy the file to any available removable media. Again, the key here is to keep the key secure, since anyone with access to it can change the password on your computer and gain access.

This is definitely a handy tool for anyone that has a tendency to forget their passwords. Of course you need to take the time now to set it up so that if/when you’re in a bind, you’ll have an escape route. And of course, use with caution, don’t let that key fall into the wrong hands!