When the Startup Settings screen appears after the Restart, select 8) Disable early launch anti-malware protection.

Select Troubleshoot > Advanced Options > Startup Settings > Restart.

After the Restart, hold down the Shift-key again and select Restart from the Power menu again to boot into startup repair.

Hold Shift-key on the keyboard and click on the Power button to select Restart.

If you run Windows 10 version 1809 or later, do the following first:.

If you run Windows 10 version 1803 or earlier, click on the Ease of Access button to open a command prompt window.

Restart the computer and boot from the Window installation this time.

Switch to the drive letter that Windows is installed on and there in the system32 directory, e.g.

by clicking on 'Repair your computer' during Windows Setup if you boot from Windows installation media.

Load the recovery and troubleshooting environment, e.g.

In newer versions of Windows, extra steps are required. The classic renaming of cmd.exe to utilman.exe does not work directly anymore in new versions of Windows.īefore the latest feature update of Windows 10, Windows 10 version 1809, users could boot into the recovery environment, replace utilman.exe with cmd.exe, and click on the 'ease of access' button to spawn a command prompt window to change the user password. There is another option though as outlined by Professor Robert McMillen on YouTube. Microsoft notes that there is no other way to reset the password users have to Reset the PC and delete all data on it to restore it (if they don't have access to another account that is). Just answer the three security questions to reset the account passwords.

Once that is out of the way, a reset password option is displayed on the sign-in screen for that local account.

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