5 Ways To Change Password Of Users In Windows XP

My friend asked about how to change the passwords of users in Windows XP. I just researched and found out five ways to change the password of users in Windows XP. I’m explaining every way one by one. If you know any other interesting way, please let me know through comments.

Using Ctrl Alt Delete

This is the easiest one in my opinion. If your press Ctrl Alt Del when you are logged onto your Windows XP machine, it will show you the classic security options.

Select change password and change the password of the logged on user.

Note: If the security options does not appear. Task manager shows up instead of the security options. Just go to Start –> Control Panel –> User Accounts –> Change the way Users Log on or off.

Uncheck Use the Welcome Screen. Log off and logon again. Now pressing Ctrl Alt Del will show the security options window.

Using Control Panel

To change your password using Control Panel, go to Start –> Control Panel –> User Accounts

Tip: You can also open control panel by Start –> Run –> control. This will open Control Panel.

Select the user for which you want to change the password and select Change my password.

Please note that you may need appropriate privileges to change the password of another user.

Using Command Prompt

To change the password of a user from the command prompt, go to Run –> cmd.

Command prompt will open. Use the following commands to change the password:

net user username password /domain

Replace username with the original username and password with the new password you want to assign to that user. /domain is optional. If you are in a domain environment, specify the domain name otherwise, if you’re using a local user, leave /domain. If I want to change the password of user Sanix to 12345. I will issue the following command at command prompt:

net user Sanix 12345

It will change the password of the user Sanix to 12345. Please note that if you’re not logged on as an administrator, you will get the following error:

“System error 5 has occurred. Access is denied”

If you want to have full usage of the net user command, go to the following Microsoft Article.

Using Control userpasswords2

To use this classic user management, go to Start –> Run –> control userpasswords2

This will open the classic user accounts management window. Select any user and select reset password.

Using Computer Management Console

To use the computer management console to change the passwords of the users, right click My Computer –> Manage –> Local Users And Groups –> Users

Right click the username for which you want to change the password and select Reset Password.

If you have any other method of changing the password, please let me know through comments. Thanks.