Windows 7 / Security and Privacy

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Creating a User Account Password Backup

Sometimes a user (or even an admin) will forget the local Administrator's or another user's account password. If you manually reset a user's account password, and the user has encrypted e-mail, files that have been encrypted or passwords they use for Internet accounts will be lost or not available with the new or reset password. With Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 you can reset a user's password without losing that encrypted data. You can consider this as backing up a user password and you do this by creating a password reset disk.

You can make a reset disk for any computer running Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008, except for domain controllers. Reset disks can be for both local accounts and domain accounts. Be careful of the following when creating a reset disk:

• You are not allowed to create a reset disk and change your password from the Log On screen simultaneously.
• You do not have to create a new reset disk each time you change a user's password; you need to create the reset disk only once for an account.
• Users should create their own reset disks for each account they use.

Follow these steps to make a password reset disk:

1. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del, and then click the Change A Password option.
2. Click Create A Password Reset Disk to start the Forgotten Password Wizard.
3. In the Forgotten Password Wizard, read the introductory message and then click Next.
4. You can use a floppy disk or a USB flash key as your password key disk. To use a floppy disk, insert a blank, formatted disk into drive A and then select Floppy Disk Drive (A:) in the drive list. To use a USB flash key, select the device you want to use in the drive list. Click Next.
5. Type the password for the current account in the text box provided and then click Next.
6. After the wizard creates the password reset disk, remove the disk and then click Finish.

Store the floppy disk or USB flash key in a secure place, because now anyone can use it to gain access to the account. If a user is unable to log on because he or she has forgotten the password, you can use the password reset disk to create a new password and log on to the account using this password by following these steps:

1. On the Log On screen, click the arrow button without entering a password. The Reset Password option should be displayed. If the user has already entered the wrong password, the Reset Password option may already be displayed.
2. Click Reset Password. This starts the Reset Password Wizard.
3. In the Reset Password Wizard, read the introductory message and then click Next.
4. Insert the disk into drive A or the USB flash key containing the password recovery file and then click Next.
5. Follow the prompts to complete the password reset process.

How the password reset disk works
The reset disk process generates a public/private key pair. There are no passwords stored on the reset disk. The reset disk contains the private key and the public key encrypts the account password. When a user forgets the account password, the restore process uses the private key on the reset disk to decrypt the current password and create a new one that is encrypted with the same key. Data is not lost because the same encryption is used for any other encrypted data.