Windows Password Removal

Live boot to your Linux OS of choice (Kali and ParrotSH recommended as they have the tools pre loaded)

Secure boot may need to be disabled to live boot.

Open file/folder explorer and navigate to the Windows drive of host machine and navigate to C:/Windows/System32/Config

Right click and ‘Open In Terminal’

Enter command ‘ chntpw -i SAM ’

Follow prompts; Select ‘1’ to list and view users you can edit.

View the list and find the ID corresponding to the user you would like to make an Administrator or remove the password outright. (ID will look like “ 0f5 ”)

When finished making the changes needed, press ‘q’ to quit. You will probably need to press ‘q’ twice before you are asked to save changes to the SAM hive.

Press ‘y’ to save changes made

Restart computer into Windows to verify changes successful

Note: If you get a read-only file system error when executing the original command, do the following-

Boot to the Windows login screen, select to Restart and live boot into Linux on that reboot. This will prevent the file system from being Read-Only.