6/6/2019

How To Use Pcunlocker

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How To Use Pcunlocker 3,5/5 6026 votes

This is a sponsored article and was made possible by Top Password. The actual contents and opinions are the sole views of the author who maintains editorial independence, even when a post is sponsored.

  1. How To Use Pcunlocker Program
  2. Pc Unlocker Pro

Have you ever found yourself locked out of a Windows account? Perhaps it was an old machine you dusted off, but you can’t remember what you set the account’s password to. Perhaps you bought a used computer only to find the seller didn’t remove their locked admin account. If you can’t access the computer’s administrator account to remove the passwords, you may find yourself totally locked out of the system altogether!

Fortunately, there are ways to unlock accounts, even if you can’t log into Windows directly. One of these ways is by using PCUnlocker, a piece of software developed by Top Password. PCUnlocker advertises itself as a one-stop shop for unlocking user accounts, from Windows 10 all the way back to Windows 2000.

How It Works

PCUnlocker isn’t software you run in Windows like other software, but instead is required to be booted into as your computer starts up. This does mean you’ll need knowledge on how to set up an alternate boot option on your machine. If you’re having issues, PCUnlocker does have tutorials on how to set it up. When making your bootable media, you have the choices of a CD and a memory stick to load PCUnlocker from.

Once you have your bootable media, boot into it as the computer starts up. PCUnlocker then shows you a window that allows you to select a user account and remove the password from it. Once done, you’ll find the user account has had its password removed, allowing you to log into it and access your computer.

Does It Work?

So we know how the software works, but does it do the job as advertised? To test this, we ran both the trial version and the paid Enterprise version on two laptops which we’ll refer to as “Laptop A” and “Laptop B.” In these examples, we’ll be trying to crack open the following account called “Open Me”.

Unlock

The Trial Version

Before you purchase the full version of PCUnlocker, you can download a trial version to test if you can get it to work on your computer. It’s essentially the full version of the software with the unlocking functionality stripped from it so you can see if your computer can run it. You can download the trials from the Top Password website.

It’s worth noting that if you’re having issues with the Standard or Professional trials, try the Enterprise trial instead. The Enterprise version works on a different bootdisk and has some problems ironed out. Users having problems with the other two versions should try Enterprise before passing final judgment on the software. In this instance, Laptop A ran the Standard trial fine, but Laptop B didn’t. However, both of them ran the Enterprise trial without issues.

It’s also worth noting that during the trial and paid Enterprise version, there’s a part during the boot where it displays a modern Windows logo and does nothing else. Don’t worry, it hasn’t crashed! Leave it for at least 5 minutes, and the spinning loading wheel should appear, followed shortly by the PCUnlocker window.

The Full Enterprise Version

Since both laptops took a shining to the Enterprise trial, it was time to move onto the paid version. Because both laptops worked perfectly fine with the trial version, they naturally took to the paid version just as well.

As you can see from this window, we managed to locate the target “Open Me” account without trouble.

What was interesting is that the Open Me account is located on the D: instead of the C:. If PCUnlocker had only cared about the C:, it would have been impossible for us to unlock the account. However, the developers had the foresight to allow the user to browse on drives other than the C:. With a simple drive change, Open Me was ready for unlocking.

Pcunlocker

The Unlocking Process

After selecting the D: and the Open Me account, all we had to do is click “Reset Password,” and PCUnlocker cracked it open with no wait whatsoever. Note that the password field for “Open Me” has gone from “<unknown>” to “<blank>.”

Afterwards, we clicked the “Restart” button to reboot the computer. Booting into Windows this time, we checked to see if Open Me had its password wiped. Sure enough, its status of “Password Protected” was gone, and it no longer needed a password to log in.

Something of Note

As was said above, PCUnlocker comes in three different versions. While each one has their fare share of additional features and extras, there is one thing to specifically note when considering each version.

As you can see here, you need to purchase the Professional version if you want to boot from a USB stick, and you need to purchase the Enterprise version for UEFI-based computers. If either of these two features are important to you, it’s vital to pick up the correct copy, or you might be disappointed with your purchase!

Final Thoughts

As a piece of software claiming it can unlock Windows accounts, PCUnlocker did its job very well. The method of burning the CD, booting into it and unlocking an account was painless and simple to perform. While Laptop B didn’t take to the Standard version, the problems were smoothed out with Enterprise which worked perfectly. The actual act of unlocking was quick and easy and could even target accounts not in the default C: fle location, which makes it perfect for those who don’t have their operating system on their main drive.

Have you ever been locked out of a computer before due to forgotten or lost account passwords? Let us know below in the comments.

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Recovering the password of your Window OS might be a real pain sometimes. The situation becomes worse if you haven’t operated your computer since ages, mostly in the case of your old desktop lying in some unvisited corner of your house.
No matter, how hard you try, you can’t even recall the slightest bit of the password. The only possible way in front of you is to reinstall Windows. But you won’t take that road in fear of losing your valuable data. You can also try password reset utilities like PCUnlocker.

What is PCUnclocker?

PCUnlocker is a utility designed by Top Password Software Inc. which can be used to reset your Windows password. The makers say that their bootable media can help you not only with local Windows passwords, it can also reset your password if you use Microsoft account on your machine.
The software can unlock various Windows versions on machines running UEFI or BIOS. The list includes Windows 10, Windows 8.1. Windows 8, Windows 7, etc. It can also be used to reset domain administrator and user passwords for Windows Server 2016/2012/2008/2003/2000.
How To Use Pcunlocker
PCUnlocker works in the case of both local and Microsoft accounts along with the facility to promote a limited Windows account to administrator.

Get PCUnlocker

In this post, we have tried to describe the working of PCUnlocker Enterprise Edtion. There are two other versions namely, Standard and Professional. You can go for anyone of them depending on your requirements.
Whatever Edition you choose, the process to obtain PCUnlocker and to set it up remains the same.
You can download the PCUnlocker Enterprise Edition using the following link:
You should have another Windows computer at your disposal since your machine isn’t allowing access. After the download completes, you can extract the zip file. Windows 8 and later versions have built-in tools for extracting zip files. For earlier versions, you can use 7zip.
In the past, we have told you about different kinds of tools to create bootable USB. You can use anyone to load PCUnclocker on a USB drive and get it going. Alternatively, use the ISO2Disc tool by top-password. For UEFI systems, select GPT (required for UEFI Boot) while creating bootable media.

Running PCUnlocker on your computer

Now, you have the PCUnlocker bootable media in your hands. To get the media running, connect the USB drive to the Windows computer for which you want to the reset the password. Start the computer and choose the USB drive as the boot option as you would normally do in the case of other bootable media.
For different machines, the key that displays the boot device options are different. For instance in HP, you can press ESC key during startup, and then use F9. For Dell, it’s F12 which directly shows the list.

Using PCUnlocker to reset Windows password

After you command your computer to boot using the PCUnlocker bootable USB, it’ll take less than a minute for the PCUnlocker window to show up on your screen.
The user interface might not be able to please you much because it looks as if it landed directly from the Windows XP era. However, the interface isn’t a thing one would care about when they’re locked out of their computer.
As evident from the screen, using PCUnlocker to reset Windows password is a three-step process. First of all, you will have to choose a recovery mode which you do by clicking on the required radio button to Reset Local Admin/User Password or Reset Active Directory Password.
Then comes the turn for the Windows SAM (Security Account Manager) file. It is a database file in Microsoft Windows which stores the login credentials in encrypted format for different user accounts existing on the system.
In most of the cases, PCUnlocker will automatically find the SAM file for your Windows installation. If it can’t do so, you need to click the Browse option and locate the SAM file yourself.
From the SAM file, PCUnclocker lists the user accounts on your system. Select the username for which you want to reset Windows password. Now click Reset Password option. A dialog box will appear asking you to proceed further or not. Click Yes.
Confirmation is displayed after the password reset process completes.
PCUnlocker will set your Windows account password to blank, i.e., the account will not have a password anymore. And literally, it was just one second, and password for Windows 8.1 was gone. Click the Restart option after you have done resetting Windows password for the desired account.

Bypass Windows password

How To Use Pcunlocker Program

PCUnlocker can help you if you don’t want to reset the password of your Windows account. It allows you to access to your Windows without setting the password to blank. To do this, PCUnlocker temporarily disables the Windows authentication subsystem.
To bypass your account password, click Options>Bypass Windows Password. Restart your computer after you have activated the feature. Please note this feature only works once per try. It means you can login without password only once. If you close the computer, the settings go back to normal, and you’ll have to run PCUlocker again.

If PCUnlocker can’t detect your hard drive

You can load the SATA/RAID drivers for your hard drive from the Options drop-down provided, you already have them on your machine.

PXE Network Boot

Most of the computer now support network booting. It comes handy when you don’t have access to a USB or optical media. PCUnlocker offers support for PXE network boot. You can host the PCUnlocker ISO on an FTP server and enable PXE network boot on your computer.

Winding Up

So, this was a brief walkthrough of the PCUnlocker Enterprise Edition. It takes no time in resetting the password for a Windows account, no matter what version you’re running. It can easily work even if your computer has 512 MB memory. You can choose between Standard (19.95), Professional (29.95), and Enterprise (49.95) Editions depending on your requirements.

Pc Unlocker Pro