Admin password reset for Win 10

Hi

I was talking to my brother the other day and seems our father is getting some senility as he is over 70 and he seems to have forgotten his win 10 password so he can not get logged into his computer. I know they can use my brothers computer to access any email he might be sent but not 100% as I guess again it depends if he remembers his email password???

Anyways is there a way I can explain to my brother as to how to help my father recover his password so he can get logged back in again.

Also should they not be able to get logged into my fathers email for any recovery emails that might be set out is there any other way they can recover it. I do not know if he has any phone numbers added to the account so not sure if a secure text is possible or not so factor that in in any response.

And I just know it's windows 10 am not sure what version of Win 10.

Thanks

This is for the log in to his desktop computer. Seems he has no issues getting onto his laptop but has forgotten the log in to his desktop computer. The log in your would enter into a lock screen.

And yes he has an MSN email address.

And a follow up on a Q about I don't know whether the lock screen log in would be considered local or microsoft account but hopefully what I said above might help in deciding which it is. I'm on the west coast their on the east coast so can't see the computer at all

Caledon Ken said:

Well if he can get into laptop then he should still have access to email, correct? That is good if it is involved in recovery.

When you log into a Windows 10 computer you can log in two ways, as a local account or as a Microsoft account.
Assume brother has access to both devices, desktop and laptop?

Yeah they live close enough he can have access to both and yes from what my brothers saying they do have email access on the laptop to access any reset emails sent out which yes is a good thing!

I assume when you said MS Account that would be your live account right? So he can always use the live account website to reset the password if that is also a factor as until the other day I didn't know his memory had gotten so bad so not sure what he remembers or not as brother said sometimes he doesn't even remember talking to family members so seems it's more advanced if he's getting that forgetful.

the page that Brink mentioned will that walk through resetting both passwords for local and MS Account as not had chance to read it fully yet being I just got it

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One other follow up Q on this lets say we try via Option 5 of Brink's page

Reset Password of User Account in Windows 10

I do not know if a security questions were set up or not and if they were again not sure if the answers are remembered or not due to the memory issues.

Are there other options should a security question not be set or an answer not remembered.

Brink said:

Correct. That tutorial has options to reset the password for both local accounts and Microsoft accounts.
You can select the I don't have any of these option if there are not any other security options available to use, but it will take longer to reset the password using this option.

OK Thanks have passed the page onto my brother who can walk through the recovery steps and try and help him regain access for my father.
Thanks!!

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One other follow up. Being I don't knwo which account he uses for log in (Local or MS Account) will logging into the other for instance still log him into the computer like normal or does it have to be the specific account used when he set up the computer.

In other words are the two methods (Local and MS Acc) interchangeable in case they have access to the MS Acc even if the computer was set up as a local log in.

As I know if he's use a password vault on his browser that can sometimes help pull up saved passwords and such depending on browser used.