Recovering a forgotten password in Windows Vista is a trivial task thanks to the built-in utility that makes it easy to backup and recover login passwords securely. It is critically important that you make a backup of both your password and the Administrator password.

To use the Password Backup utility, open the Control Panel, go to User Accounts and click on ‘Create a password reset disk’ on the left sidebar.

From the ‘Forgotten Password Wizard’, select the removable media type you want to save your password on and click next. Now, type your current account password and click next. Now you should have a password reset disk for your user account. Make sure to keep it in a safe place!

To recover your password, boot your computer and at the login screen select ‘Reset password’ (appears after unsuccessfuly login attempt). Follow the instructions in the ‘Password Reset Wizard’.