6 Best Free Windows Password Recovery Tools 2021

The Ophcrack Windows password cracker is by far the best freeware Windows password recovery tool available. It’s fast and easy enough for a first-time Windows password cracker with a basic knowledge of Windows.

With Ophcrack, you don’t need any access to Windows to be able to recover your lost passwords. From another computer, visit the site, download the free ISO image, burn it to a CD or flash drive, and then boot from it.

The Ophcrack program starts, locates the Windows user accounts, and proceeds to recover (crack) the passwords—all automatically.

In a test on a Windows 8 PC, Ophcrack recovered the 8-character password (mixed letters and numbers) to an administrator account in 3 minutes and 29 seconds.

Ophcrack supports Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows XP. Though weI tried Ophcrack against three very simple Windows 10 passwords, not one of them were found.

Offline NT Password & Registry Editor works differently from most password recovery programs in that it erases your Windows password instead of recovering it. You can think of it as more of a Windows password tool.

Like Ophcrack, you boot from a burned disc or flash drive created with the Offline NT Password & Registry Editor ISO file. After running the program, log in to your Windows account without entering a password at all, and then, of course, make a new password if that’s what you want.

We’ve tested Offline NT Password & Registry Editor on 64-bit & 32-bit versions of Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows XP PCs, and it reset the passwords immediately without a problem. It should work on Windows 2000 and Windows NT operating systems too.

Kon-Boot is yet another free password reset program, much like ONTP&RE. Just burn the program to a disc or USB drive, boot from it, and you’re off.

Kon-Boot works differently from the two password reset tools above, so if you have problems using them, give Kon-Boot a try. It’s easy to use and probably the fastest password reset-and-recovery tool available.

Kon-Boot 1.0 does not work with 64-bit versions of Windows, nor any version of Windows 8 or Windows 10. We used Kon-Boot v1.0 to successfully delete the password on a Windows Vista PC and then also on a Windows XP PC.

Cain & Abel is a free, fast and effective Windows password recovery tool.

Unlike Ophcrack and other popular Windows password-hacking programs, Cain & Abel requires access to Windows under an administrator account. As such, it’s a valuable resource to recover passwords to accounts other than the one you’re using.

Cain & Abel was able to recover the 10-character password to the Windows XP “Administrator” account in 10 seconds. While it only officially supports Windows XP, 2000, and NT, some people have had luck getting it to work in Windows Vista and Windows 7.

We’ve tried it with Windows 10, 8, 7, and Vista, and was unsuccessful each time.

Boot Trinity Rescue Kit from a disc or USB stick to work. It includes many different tools, one of which is for password recovery.

Use Trinity Rescue Kit to clear a password entirely, making it blank, or to set a custom one.

The program lacks a graphical interface. However, even if you’re not used to a command-line interface, most of the required keystrokes are just numbers for choosing different options for resetting a password.

Trinity Rescue Kit should work with Windows 10, 8, 7, Vista, and XP.