Vista - How to Avoid Forgetting your Password
If you tend to forget passwords, Vista has a handy trick up its sleeve...
We've all done it at some time or another - set up a password then forgetting it. Sometimes it's just an inconvenience but if its your Vista logon password, things can become a little challanging. Luckily, with a little forward planning, you can easily recover from such a situation.
What you need is to create a 'password reset disk'. Open the control panel then the User Accounts applet. On the top left hand side you'll see a list of tasks. The first one is 'Create a password reset disk' - select this. You need to have some sort of removable media for this to work such as a USB flash drive or floppy disk (remember those?). If Vista doesn't detect anything suitable it won't allow you to proceed but otherwise it will prompt you to enter your current password. If your user account doesn't have one, it advises you to leave it blank but then we'd suggest there's not much reason to create a reset disk!! It then asks you to confirm where you want to create the reset information and writes out a small 2K file. Job done.
You'll need to create a seperate file for each account you want to create a reset disk for and this is done by logging in to each one in turn then running the 'Create a password reset disk' wizard. If you have enabled the Administrator account, be sure to create a reset disk for that one too.
Recovery
If at any point in the future you find yourself having a senior moment, insert your USB flash drive or floppy disk and select 'reset password' from the Vista logon screen. This starts the pasword reset wizard. Follow the prompts and enter a new password when asked. Once the wizard has finished, just logon as normal but using your new password - it's as easy as that!
