Reset Another User's Windows Password From an Admin Account

Before you reset anyone's password, check one thing: can they still sign in? If they can, do not reset it — have them press Ctrl+Alt+Delete and choose Change a password themselves.

If they genuinely cannot get in, then you reset it. For a local account: open Command Prompt as administrator and run net user theirusername thenewpassword. For a Microsoft account, you cannot do it from this PC at all.

Here is why the first question matters more than the method. To Windows, changing a password and resetting one are two different operations, and only one of them keeps the account's saved data.

When someone changes their own password, they supply the old one, and Windows uses it to unlock and re-lock the account's protected data. Nothing is lost. When an administrator resets it, there is no old password to unlock anything with — so on a local account, that user's saved website passwords, network credentials, and any EFS-encrypted files are destroyed permanently. Not locked. Gone. Their new password will not open them, and neither will yours.

The convenient route is the destructive one, and Windows only warns you about it in one place most people never look.

The Reset That Cost a Customer Every Saved Login

A small accountancy firm brought Jake a desktop that three people shared. One of them, who came in on Thursdays, had gone on leave and nobody could get into her account. They needed a file from it.

Jake did the obvious thing. He signed in as the admin account, opened Local Users and Groups, right-clicked her user, chose Set Password, typed a new one, and clicked past a warning dialog the way everyone clicks past warning dialogs. He was into her account in under a minute. The file was there. Everyone was pleased.

She came back from leave two weeks later to find that every saved password in her browser was gone, the network drive credentials no longer worked, and a folder of client documents she had encrypted years earlier would not open — not with her old password, not with the new one, not for anybody.

Jake rang Ethan expecting to be told about a recovery tool. There isn't one.

Ethan's explanation was short: "You didn't unlock her account. You replaced the lock. Everything that was protected with the old key is still sitting there, and the key is the one thing you threw away. The dialog you clicked through was Windows telling you that, in about as many words."

The part that stings is that it was avoidable in two directions. She could have been called and asked to change it herself. And if a reset really was the only route, ten minutes of copying her documents to a USB drive beforehand would have saved the ones that mattered. Neither takes any skill. Both require knowing that a reset is not a neutral act.

Change and Reset Are Not the Same Word

In ordinary speech these mean the same thing. Inside Windows they are two different operations with two different outcomes, and the whole of this page rests on the distinction.

Windows protects certain per-account things — saved website passwords, stored network credentials, certificates, EFS-encrypted files — with a master key. That master key is itself locked using a key derived from the account's password. So the account password is not merely a door: it is the thing that unlocks the key that unlocks everything else.

	Change (the owner does it)	Reset (an admin does it)
Old password supplied?	Yes	No — the admin does not know it
What Windows does	Unlocks the master key with the old password, re-locks it with the new one	Cannot unlock it. Starts a new one.
Saved passwords	Kept	Lost
EFS-encrypted files	Kept	Unreadable, permanently
Ordinary documents	Kept	Kept — only encrypted ones are affected
On a company domain	Kept	Recoverable — the domain holds backup keys

That last row is worth noticing, because it explains why this catches home and small-business users hardest. On a company domain the domain controller keeps backup copies of those keys, so an IT department resets passwords all day without anybody losing anything. On a standalone home or shop machine there is no such backup, and there is nothing to fall back on.

So the advice that follows from the mechanism is simple. A reset is not the normal way to help someone with a password. It is the emergency way, for when they cannot sign in at all.

The Route That Loses Nothing

If the person can still sign in — they know the password and simply want a new one, or you want them off a password everyone in the office knows — this is the only route you should use.

1. Have them sign in to their own account. Not you.
2. Press Ctrl+Alt+Delete and choose Change a password.
3. They enter the old password once and the new one twice.
4. Done. Every saved credential and encrypted file survives, because Windows had the old password to work with.

The equivalent through Settings is Accounts, then Sign-in options, then Password, then Change — the same operation with more clicks. If they use a PIN or fingerprint and cannot remember ever typing a password, the account password still exists underneath and is what these screens are asking for. Our guide on changing the password on your own user account covers that path in full, including what to do when the PIN works but the password is a mystery.

Ethan's rule, which is worth adopting wholesale: "An admin reset is not a favor you do for somebody. It is damage you do on their behalf because the alternative is worse. If the alternative isn't worse, don't do it."

Resetting a Local Account Through Settings

They cannot sign in, it is a local account, and a reset is genuinely the way forward. Before anything else, copy their documents somewhere safe — you can read their files right now as an administrator, and after the reset some of them may not open.

1. Sign in to your administrator account.
2. Open Settings, choose Accounts, then Other users.
3. Select the account. If Windows shows an email address under the name, stop — that is a Microsoft account and this route will not work. Skip to the Microsoft account section below.
4. Where a local account offers a password option, choose it and set the new password.
5. Give them the new password and ask them to change it to something of their own once they are in.

Windows has moved this around between builds, and on some versions the Settings app no longer offers a password option for other users at all. That is not a fault on your machine and it is not worth hunting for. Use net user below, which has worked identically for twenty years and will not be moved next update.

Local Users and Groups, and the Warning Worth Reading

Press Windows+R, type lusrmgr.msc, press Enter. Open Users, right-click the account, and choose Set Password.

Windows then shows a warning telling you that resetting this password will cause irreversible loss of information for that account, and it names what goes: encrypted files, saved passwords, and personal security certificates.

That dialog is the single place in Windows where the whole of this page is stated plainly, and it has a reputation for being clicked through in half a second because it looks like every other confirmation box. It is not one. It is an accurate, specific description of permanent data loss, and if you have read this far you now know it is not exaggerating.

One practical note: lusrmgr.msc is not included in Home editions of Windows. If it reports that the snap-in cannot be used, you are on Home, nothing is broken, and the net user command does the same job. Guides that assume everyone has this console are the reason people conclude their Windows installation is damaged when it is merely a different edition.

The Command Line Route, Which Always Works

This works on every edition including Home, has not changed in decades, and is the method to remember when Settings has rearranged itself again. Open Command Prompt with Run as administrator — simply being signed in as an administrator is not enough, and our guide covers every route to an elevated prompt if the Start menu is uncooperative.

First, see the exact account names, because display names and account names often differ:

net user

Then set the new password:

net user theirusername thenewpassword

If the account name contains a space, put it in quotes. To be prompted for the password rather than have it sitting in your command history and on screen behind you, use an asterisk instead:

net user theirusername *

The change is immediate, with no restart. And to make them choose their own password the moment they sign in, which is good practice when you have had to invent one for them:

net user theirusername /logonpasswordchg:yes

Be clear-eyed about one thing: this is friendlier to type and identical in consequence. The command shows no warning at all, which makes it the most dangerous of the three routes for exactly the reason it feels like the safest.

When It Is a Microsoft Account, You Cannot Help

This is the wall people hit when setting up a family computer, and no amount of administrator rights gets over it.

A Microsoft account password is not stored on your PC. It lives with Microsoft, and your machine checks it against their servers. Being an administrator on this computer gives you authority over this computer, and a Microsoft account is not part of it. There is no local tool, command or registry edit that changes it, and anything claiming otherwise is either describing a local account or lying to you.

What they do instead: go to account.live.com/password/reset from any device and reset it using their recovery email or phone number. Once it is reset, they sign in on the PC with the new password, and the machine picks it up on the next connected sign-in.

Two practical wrinkles. If the PC is offline, Windows uses a cached copy of the old password, so the old one may keep working locally until it reconnects. And if they have lost access to the recovery email and phone as well, Microsoft's account recovery form is the only route, it takes days, and no local administrator can shorten it. That is the moment to consider whether a new local account with their files copied across is a faster path back to a working computer.

There is a related situation — nobody knows any password, and there is no admin account to work from. That is a different problem with different answers, and our guide to removing a forgotten administrator password covers it properly, including the BitLocker check to do before you start.

Exactly What Goes, and What Stays

People either panic and assume everything is gone, or shrug and assume nothing is. Both are wrong, and the real list is short enough to be worth knowing precisely.

Item	After an admin reset	Notes
Documents, photos, downloads	Safe	Ordinary files are untouched. This is most of what people care about.
Installed programs and settings	Safe	The account and its profile continue to exist as before.
EFS-encrypted files and folders	Lost	Still on disk, permanently unreadable. Green filenames in Explorer are the giveaway.
Saved website and network passwords	Lost	Credential Manager entries and browser passwords tied to the account.
Personal certificates	Lost	Matters for signed email and some banking or government portals.
Passwords synced to a cloud account	Safe	Anything held by a browser account or a password manager comes back on sign-in.
BitLocker or Device Encryption	Unaffected	Drive encryption is unlocked by the TPM, not the account password.

The last row is worth separating out clearly, because the two get confused constantly. Whole-drive encryption and per-account protected data are different layers. A password reset does not stop the machine booting or lock the drive — for that side of things, our guide to Device Encryption and BitLocker is the one you want.

The cloud row is the quiet good news. Anyone signed into a browser account or using a real password manager loses very little, because their passwords were never really living in Windows. That is a reasonable argument for using one, made without anybody selling you anything.

If You Have Already Done It

Most people reach this page after the fact, so here is the honest position rather than false hope.

If the old password is remembered, set it back. This is the one genuine rescue. Reset the account to the exact old password and Windows can once again derive the key that unlocks the master key. Saved credentials and encrypted files come back. It works only if the old password is known precisely, and it is worth asking everyone who might remember it before concluding otherwise.

If an EFS recovery certificate was exported beforehand, import it and use it to decrypt the files. Almost nobody on a home machine has done this, but it is standard practice in businesses that use EFS deliberately.

On a company domain, speak to whoever runs it. Domain controllers keep backup keys precisely so that administrative resets do not destroy data, and recovery is routine.

On a standalone machine with none of the above, the encrypted files cannot be recovered. Not by a tool, not by a service, not by Microsoft. Anything advertising otherwise is selling a false promise. What does still work: backups made before the reset are fine, because the files were readable when they were copied, and cloud-synced passwords return on sign-in.

If that is where you are, it is worth saying plainly — this is a trap that Windows sets quietly, the warning is easy to miss, and a great many competent people have walked into it. Salvage the backups, get the saved passwords reset through the normal forgot-password routes, and move on.

What This Page Said in 2016

The original version of this post did what almost every page on this subject still does. It showed you where the Set Password option was, and it stopped there. The steps were correct and they worked.

What it never mentioned was the cost. There was no warning about saved passwords, nothing about encrypted files, and no suggestion that asking the person to change it themselves was a better idea when it was possible. A reader following it exactly would have done the job successfully and had no idea anything had been lost until weeks later, which is precisely what happened to Jake's customer.

That is why this rewrite leads with the question rather than the method. The clicking was never the difficult part of this task. Knowing when not to click was.

Your Questions, Answered Straight

How do I reset another user's password from my admin account?

For a local account, open Settings, go to Accounts, then Other users, select the account, choose Change account type or use Local Users and Groups, and set a new password. From an administrator Command Prompt the one-line version is net user theirusername thenewpassword. For a Microsoft account you cannot do it from this PC at all, and they have to reset it at Microsoft's website.

What is the difference between changing a password and resetting one?

A change is done by the account owner, who supplies the old password. A reset is done by an administrator, who does not. That difference is not cosmetic: Windows uses the old password to re-encrypt the account's protected data during a change, and during a reset it has no old password to work with, so that data is lost.

What does an admin password reset destroy?

On a local account it permanently destroys files encrypted with EFS, saved website and network passwords held in Credential Manager, and any certificates tied to the account. The files remain on disk but nothing can decrypt them again, including that user with their new password. This is why the option should be a last resort rather than a convenience.

Why does Windows lose saved passwords on a reset but not on a change?

Windows protects that data with a master key that is itself encrypted using a key derived from the account password. When the owner changes their password, Windows unlocks the master key with the old password and re-locks it with the new one, so nothing is lost. An administrator resetting the password has no old password, so the master key cannot be unlocked and its contents are gone.

Is there a way to reset someone's password without losing their data?

Yes, and it is the whole point of this page: have them change it themselves. If they can still sign in, ask them to press Ctrl+Alt+Delete and choose Change a password. That path keeps everything. Only reach for an admin reset when they genuinely cannot sign in, and tell them what it costs before you do it.

Can I reset a Microsoft account password from an admin account?

No. A Microsoft account password lives with Microsoft, not on your PC, so no local administrator can change it. They reset it at account.live.com/password/reset using their recovery email or phone. Local administrator rights end at the edge of the machine, which surprises people setting up a family computer.

How do I reset a password using the net user command?

Open Command Prompt as administrator and run net user to list the accounts on the machine, then net user theirusername thenewpassword. To be prompted rather than typing the password on screen, use net user theirusername * instead. The change is immediate and no restart is needed. It carries exactly the same data loss as any other reset.

Where is Local Users and Groups, and why can I not find it?

Press Windows+R and run lusrmgr.msc. On Windows Home editions it is not included, which is why guides mentioning it seem to describe a console you do not have. On Home, use Settings or the net user command instead. Both do the same job with the same consequences.

What is the warning Windows shows when I set a password this way?

Local Users and Groups shows a warning that proceeding will lose access to encrypted files, saved passwords and personal security certificates for that account. It is not boilerplate and it is not a maybe. It is an accurate description of what is about to happen, and it is the only place Windows says so plainly.

Can I make the user set their own password at next sign-in?

Yes. After resetting, run net user theirusername /logonpasswordchg:yes, or check "User must change password at next logon" in Local Users and Groups. They will be prompted to choose their own password when they sign in. Note that this happens after the reset, so it does not prevent the data loss the reset already caused.

Do I need to be an administrator to do any of this?

Yes. Resetting another account's password is an administrative action, and Command Prompt must be opened with Run as administrator rather than simply signed in as an admin. Access denied from net user almost always means an ordinary prompt rather than an elevated one, not that you lack rights.

Can the lost encrypted files be recovered afterwards?

Only if the old password is remembered and set back, or if an EFS recovery certificate was exported beforehand, or on a company domain where the domain controller holds backup keys. On a home machine with none of those, the files are unrecoverable. Backups made before the reset are unaffected, because they were readable when they were made.

Does resetting a password affect BitLocker or Device Encryption?

Not directly. Drive encryption is unlocked by a key sealed to the TPM, not by the account password, so the drive still starts normally. The two are separate systems and it is worth not confusing them. What a reset destroys is the per-account protected data, which is a different layer from the whole-drive encryption.

The Password option is missing or grayed out. Why?

Usually because the account is a Microsoft account rather than a local one, in which case there is nothing to change on this PC. Other causes are a work or school account managed elsewhere, or a policy on a company machine that reserves the action for the IT team. Check the account type in Settings, Accounts, Other users first.

Should I use a third-party password reset tool instead?

No. Those tools clear the password by editing the account database directly, which causes the same data loss with none of the warnings, and the download pages for them are a well-known route for bundled malware. Everything they claim to do is already built into Windows and covered here. There is no capability worth the risk.

What should I do before resetting anyone's password?

Three things. Ask whether they can still sign in, because if they can, a change is free and a reset is not. Warn them that saved passwords and encrypted files will be lost, so nothing is a surprise afterwards. And copy their documents to another drive first, since files that are readable now may not be in ten minutes.

Worth Reading Next

Revision note. Originally published June 12, 2016 as a short walkthrough of where the Set Password option lives. Rewritten August 22, 2026 for Windows 11 and Windows 10. The original showed the steps and never mentioned what they cost, which is the gap this rewrite exists to close: an administrative reset permanently destroys that account's saved passwords and encrypted files, while the same person changing their own password loses nothing. New here: the change-versus-reset comparison, an exact list of what survives and what does not, the net user route for Home editions, the Microsoft account wall, and honest recovery options for anyone who has already done it. If you are reading this after the fact, you are in good company and it was not carelessness — Windows makes the destructive route the convenient one and mentions the cost in a dialog nobody is expecting to matter.