How Long Does It Take Ophcrack to Recover Your Lost Windows Password?

Summer vacation finally! I returned from college and enjoyed sweet family life. But there is a little trouble with my computer. Today when I attempted to logon my home computer, I found I could not remember the password (which was set almost one year ago) at all. I did have a Windows password reset disk with me when I bought the computer, but at this critical time, it could not be found anywhere. So I had to try several ways including the password hint, but this did not work. Then I tried using Ophcrack, which was recommended by my brother, to reset Windows 8 password.

My brother recommended it as "very easy to use". He said he had used it before and it worked very well and effectively. He gave me an ISO image CD and my computer booted from this CD. Then the Ophcrack program started. It began recovering passwords after locating all Windows user accounts. Honestly, all work was completed automatically and very easy to use indeed.

I had hoped that I could get access to my computer after seconds or at most several minutes, because my brother said this program only took several seconds to recover his lost password. However, to my great disappointment, after more than 15 minutes, the password recovery work was still "in progress" and there was no sign of quick recovery soon. I felt very puzzled. Ophcrack did not seem to work very well with my Windows account.

Why? What could I do?

So I called the company’s consumer service hotline, and got the explanation. The consumers service staff told me how long it takes Ophcrack to reset Windows password depends on the complexity, i.e. the type and length of the password. For example, a password made up of 6 simple characters can be recovered very quickly while a 12-digit complicated one containing numbers and special symbols can take much longer. Although most users give back positive feedback of fast recovery, some very complicated Windows password recovery does take a very long time, maybe days or even weeks. He said that the software could not complete password recovery within a short time because of the nature of my password, maybe it was set too complicated or too long.

The consumer service staff also said that Ophcrack can't be 100% successful at finding every password because some computer users tend to set their password too complicated or too long (just like me). He recommended that if this software did not work very well with my computer, maybe I could try out other password recovery tools because Ophcrack worked by actually "recovering" the password while there are other tools which "delete" the password and allow users to get access to the computer account without a password and then set their own password afterwards.

I thought about this and decided to give Ophcrack a little more time. So I went out shopping and when I come back for dinner after two hours, I found Ophcrack had got the password back for me. I looked at this recovered password. Admittedly, it was a complicated one. And I Wondered how I managed to find such a complicated password for my computer at that time.

Yes, just as one coin has two sides, having a complicated Windows password has two sides too. It can help prevent unauthorized users snoop into your computer, and become a big problem for yourself when you forget your Windows password. I guess maybe next time I should try to set my Windows password a little bit easier to remember. Although password recovery software is effective and convenient, I figure the best solution is to keep passwords well in my heart at any time.