Have you ever forgot the computer password, and want to reset it? Typically, you just need to boot into Windows installer ISO, open cmd and rename the utilman.exe. However, you can’t do that if the bitlocker is enabled on that computer. You will need to disable the bitlocker first. On this article, I want to share how to disable the bitlocker and reset the forgotten password. This require either the Bitlocker Password or Bitlocker Recovery Key

Disable Bitlocker

  1. Booting with ISO, and shift+10
  2. Check bitlocker lock status on the drive.
manage-bde -status
  1. If Lock status: Locked, then the drive is being locked.
  2. You can use one of the following command to temporarily unlock the bitlocker on D drive.
  • Using password.
manage-bde -unlock D: -Password [bitlocker-password]
  • Using recovery key.
manage-bde -unlock D: -RecoveryPassword [bitLocker_recover_key]
  1. If you want to Disable/Turnoff Bitlocker. This process might take times depend on Drive size.
manage-bde off D

Decryption is now in progress
  1. To Check the decryption progress, use the same command as follows:
manage-bde -status
  1. Once the decryption progress is done, you will see Conversion Status: Fully Decrypted.

Reset Password

After the bitlocker is disabled, you can continue to reset the password with the following:

move d:\windows\system32\utilman.exe d:\windows\system32\utilman.exe.bak

copy d:\windows\system32\cmd.exe d:\windows\system32\utilman.exe