Recently, I needed to use my lab and I forgot domain administrator password to Windows 2012 R2 Domain Controller. Fortunately I was able to recover it by doing following steps:
- Boot Windows 2012 R2 Domain Controller from Windows 2012 R2 ISO. Click Next.
- Click Repair your computer.
- Click Troubleshoot.
- Change directory to D:\Windows\system32 and run commands: copy Utilman.exe Utilman.exe.old and copy cmd.exe Utilman.exe.
- Reboot system by running command: shutdown /r /t 0
- Boot system from local disk and when the welcome screen appears, hit the Windows key and press "U". Then change administrator password by running: net use administrator password. Reboot system.
- Please follow again steps 1-3. Then change directory to D:\Windows\system32. Please run following command: move Utilman.exe.old Utilman.exe.
- Reboot system. The password should be changed now.
