{"id":1329,"date":"2013-06-27T05:26:41","date_gmt":"2013-06-27T05:26:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/microsoftgeek.com\/?p=1329"},"modified":"2018-09-06T23:16:00","modified_gmt":"2018-09-06T23:16:00","slug":"how-to-reset-your-forgotten-domain-admin-password-on-server-2008-r2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/microsoftgeek.com\/?p=1329","title":{"rendered":"How to Reset Your Forgotten Domain Admin Password on Server 2008 R2"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"image\" alt=\"image\" src=\"http:\/\/cdn.howtogeek.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/image100.png\" width=\"650\" height=\"286\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Forgetting your password is always a pain, but luckily there\u2019s an easy way to reset your Domain Administrator password. All you need is a copy of the Windows Server 2008 R2 installation disk and one simple command line trick.<\/p>\n<h3>Replacing Utilman.exe<\/h3>\n<p>Boot off the Windows disk and select the \u201cRepair your computer\u201d option from the lower left-hand corner.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"image\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/cdn.howtogeek.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/image94.png\" width=\"648\" height=\"208\" border=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Follow through until you get to the option to open the Command Prompt, which you\u2019ll want to select.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"image\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/cdn.howtogeek.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/image95.png\" width=\"650\" height=\"202\" border=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>First you\u2019ll want to type in the following command to backup the utilman.exe file:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>MOVE C:\\Windows\\System32\\Utilman.exe C:\\Windows\\System32\\Utilman.exe.bak<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"image\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/cdn.howtogeek.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/image96.png\" width=\"650\" height=\"147\" border=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Now you will need to copy cmd.exe and rename it Utilman.exe:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>COPY C:\\Windows\\System32\\cmd.exe C:\\Windows\\System32\\Utilman.exe<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"image\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/cdn.howtogeek.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/image97.png\" width=\"650\" height=\"117\" border=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Now you can go ahead and reboot your machine. When its done booting up again and you are at the Logon screen click on the Ease of access icon.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"image\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/cdn.howtogeek.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/image98.png\" width=\"109\" height=\"60\" border=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I bet you weren\u2019t expecting that open a command prompt\u00a0 <img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/cdn.howtogeek.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/wlEmoticon-smile2.png\" \/> To change the password type:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>net user administrator *<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Once you press enter you will asked to set a new password and then confirm it, when entering your new password don\u2019t worry if you can\u2019t see them as you type, they are invisible, they are however being remembered.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"image\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/cdn.howtogeek.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/image99.png\" width=\"650\" height=\"158\" border=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Once you\u2019re logged in again don\u2019t forget to delete Utilman.exe and then rename Utilman.exe.bak back to plain old Utilman.exe.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Forgetting your password is always a pain, but luckily there\u2019s an easy way to reset your Domain Administrator password. All you need is a copy of the Windows Server 2008 R2 installation disk and one simple command line trick. Replacing Utilman.exe Boot off the Windows disk and select the \u201cRepair your computer\u201d option from the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-2008"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microsoftgeek.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microsoftgeek.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microsoftgeek.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microsoftgeek.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microsoftgeek.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1329"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/microsoftgeek.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1329\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2641,"href":"https:\/\/microsoftgeek.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1329\/revisions\/2641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microsoftgeek.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microsoftgeek.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microsoftgeek.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}