Greetings, I'm Professor Kay. And in this short video presentation, we're going to see how we go about resetting a lost administrator password on Windows Server. This procedure that you're about to be shown will work on server 2016, and server 2019, and it will work on server 2012. For this demonstration, I'll be using one virtual install server 2016 running as a standalone server. But this procedure will work on a domain controller as well. So for my virtual machine, I'm just going to right click on it and I'm going to go to Settings.

On this next screen, we're going to select storage. From here I'm going to go down to my optical drive, and I'm going to browse on over until I find the location for my ISO image for that particular version of Windows Server. In this case, I need the ISO image for server 2016. I'm going to double click it and now you're going to see That you have the ISO image mounted inside of this optical drive. Now, if this were an actual physical machine, I would just insert the medium, that would be the DVD that contains the setup files for my server 2016 into the DVD drive of that physical machine. And then I would configure the machine to boot from the DVD as its first boot option.

And that would give me the option to start the installation process, which is how we're going to get the repair option. And now we're ready to go ahead and boot. So I'm going to go ahead and start the virtual machine. And in just a moment, we'll begin the actual installation. Well, we're going to select the repair option, instead of doing a full blown install, so we have this option here. And that's the option that we need to be able to boot from that DVD to get the repair option.

So you saw how I was able to go ahead and start the installation process just by pressing any key on my keyboard. Now we're going to go ahead on this first screen before starting the installation, and just click Next. Now on the second screen, you notice that you have the repair option down here at the lower left corner, go ahead and click on that. And on this next screen, we're going to select troubleshoot. And from the next screen, we're going to select the command prompt, we now need to get access to our windows directory that belongs to our actual installation of server 2016. That is running this virtual machine.

Now normally, you would think that would be the C partition. But in this case, it's probably not going to be your C partition, it'll probably be the D partition. So if we just type in D colon, and we hit enter, you'll notice that it comes up to the D prop and if I type in dir, you'll notice that I do have a Windows directory available right here. For the Microsoft Windows operating system as far back as I can remember, everything that needs to happen it's going to happen inside of the system 32 folder. This is where all of the executable All the all of the DLL all of your utilities are located. So we're going to change directory on over to Windows backslash system 32.

When I do this and I hit Enter, you'll notice that my prompt changes to let me know that I am now inside of the system 32 directory when you boot up windows for the first time or anytime and you get to that log on screen underneath there waiting for you to use is a utility called utils. Man daddy xe. This allows you to configure some things such as the accessibility options, which includes the magnifier, your high contrast theme, the narrator and your on screen keyboard. Let's take a look at that real quick. I am sitting at the screen for a server 2019 installation. But it would be the same if I was looking at server 2012 or server 2016.

Now if I want to bring up the utility man, all I have to do is press the Windows key and the letter U Let's see if that works here. And there's the utility man dy dx. Now we're going to use this utility, but we're going to trick it into giving us the command prompt instead of these accessibility options. And let's see how we do that. So we know that we have access to the utility man dot txt utility at log on. So what I'm going to do is rename the utility man daddy xe to something other than you feel man, Daddy xe such as utility man.xc dot old, and then I'm going to make me a copy of the command prompt.

And I'm going to name that utils man dot e xe. So at my prompt, I'm going to type in Rn, that's the Rename command. And I'm going to follow that up with the name of the utility that I want to rename, give it a space and then I'm going to type in the new name that I want that utility to be referred to by. So I've typed in our in for the Rename, give it a space. I want to rename the utility Daddy xe to YouTube man daddy xe dot O. I'm gonna go ahead and hit enter. Notice that my command prompt comes right back to me, let me know that that command completed successfully.

So my utils man, Daddy xe utility has been renamed, so it's not going to be accessible from the log on. So I need to get something else up there that I can use, and in this case is going to be the command prompt. So I'm going to make me a copy of the command prompt. And I'm going to name it utils dot e xe, so that when I do hit the Windows key plus the letter U at the log on screen, I will be presented with a command prompt instead of the utility man daddy x utility. So that I can make all of this work, I have made a copy of my command prompt. And I have renamed that copying to utils man, Daddy xe, I'm going to go ahead and hit Enter.

And it lets me know that the command completed successfully now to see if I'm right about this I can go ahead and check the size of my command prompt and the size of my Utila man daddy xe using the DIR command and see if they are both the same. So you can see that my command prompt by use the DIR command, this one right here shows me that the size of my command prompt is 2000 or 232,960 bytes. And that is the same size I'm now showing for my utility and daddy xe. So I know that my command prompt has been copied over and renamed to utility man daddy xe and I'll be able to have access to it. When I type in that Windows cluster up. We're all done with the command prompt so we can just type in exit and we can exit out of here we come back to our repair options, and now we can select Continue.

And that's going to allow me to boot on Do not hit enter this time. Go ahead and just let it boot up normally and it will find the actual virtual drive that we created for server 2016, and boot to the desktop. So I'm now at the screen where I can hit Control Alt Delete to attempt to login, but I don't know the administrator password, so it's not going to do me any good, I need to change it. So let's go ahead and use that Windows Key Plus, you can bring up the command prompt. And there's our command prompt. Now, to change the administrator password, I'm going to use the net user command.

So I'm going to type in net user and the account that I want to change which is administrator. And now I'm going to type in the new administrator password. I'm going to hit Enter, and then it lets me know that the command completed successfully if this were a domain controller, I would have to type in net space user the account that I want to change the password for and then the password but then I'd have to follow it up with a forward slash domain and that will change the administrator password for active directory. On a domain controller. So we're all done here. We're now ready to go ahead and log in.

So I'm going to go ahead and send over it ctrl alt, delete. And now I'm going to type in my new password. And it lets me know that the command did work, because I can log in now with that change passwords. So that's how you're going to go about changing the last administrator password prior to server 2016. Server 2019. And yesterday will work for server 2012, as well.

Now personally, I don't see nothing wrong with replacing the utility man daddy xe with the command prompt and just leaving it, but if you're so inclined, that you want your utils man dot txt utility back on your server, you just repeat the repair process and go back in and do a renaming process which I'll show you now. So if you would like to make that change to your utils dot e xe utility, just again, go into the settings for your installation Going to storage, select your optical drive. And again, you're going to bounce on over and find the location for that 2016 ISO image could select that say okay, and we're going to go ahead and start up and again, we're going to begin the installation process, but we will be selecting the repair option. And there's an option I hit Enter. And now we're going to, again have that first screen and then we're going to move on to the second screen and select the repair option.

So I'm gonna go ahead and say next, and there's my repair option. Again, I'm going to select troubleshoot. And again, I'll select command prompt. Just as before, I'm going to have to go into my D drive. And now I'm going to move myself on over to the system 32 folder by typing in CD, Windows backslash system. 30 to check my spelling and I have an extra space there.

Let's get rid of that. And I'll hit Enter. And you'll notice that my prompt changes, let me know that we're back inside of the system 32 directory. So you got to remember that we made a copy of the command prompt. And we renamed that to utils man daddy xe. So what I have to do now is rename that file to something other than utils dot e xe to do this, I'm just going to type in Rn, space utils man and now I'm going to give it a nother name.

So I'm going to call this one utl man 123 just like that. That comes back to the prop letting me know that that command completed successfully now I'm going to copy on over the original utils man that we renamed you chill man, Daddy XC dot o and I'm going to give it back. Its original So I'm going to copy on over you kill man, Daddy XC dot old. And I'm going to rename it to its correct name of utils man, dot EFC comes back let you know what that file was copied on over. And now if I would like to check, make sure that that file does exist, I can just type in dir u plus an asterick. And I can just bring up everything.

And I can find the utility man. And there it is right here. So I know at this command did work and I do have my utility man dot txt back. But as I stated for a server, where the administrator is the only one logging on, I see nothing wrong with just leaving your utility man daddy xe available to provide you with the command prompt. So I'm going to go ahead and just tell it to continue on. And we're just going to go ahead and boot up and then we'll test Are you chill man daddy to make sure he's back in place.

So we're back up to that option where we can send Over a Ctrl Alt Delete to log on. So I'm going to go ahead and try out my windows plus my you and see if I get that you feel man daddy xe. And there it is. So we know that that work and everything's back to its normal self and we're ready to move on and be able to use this domain controller with our new administrator password. That's going to conclude this short video presentation on how we go about resetting the administrator password for either server 2016 server 2019 and yes, server 2012. Now if you have any questions or concerns about anything that was covered in this video, or in the lab file, please don't hesitate to reach out and contact your instructor and I'll see you in my next video.