How often have you tried to access something hidden behind a password set by you, only to realise that the password you are trying is not working. Are you one of those who are habituated in forgetting passwords? Don’t worry. There is still some hope for you.
Recovering the ******** password
When you can see a saved password in the form of ********, all you need is a password revealing utility such as Snadboy’s Revelation. All you have to do is run the application and drag and drop a little round button over to the ******** password. SnadBoy’s Revelation will show what’s hidden beneath those asterisks (or black circles if you are using Windows Vista). Nirsoft’s Asterisk Logger is another such utility which can do this job fairly well.
These utilities only work in places such as Microsoft Outlook’s POP server settings and FTP programs such as CuteFTP where you can see the forgotten password in the form of asterisks.
Recovering Outlook’s PST file password
To recover your forgotten PST file password in Microsoft Outlook, you need to use Nirsoft’s PstPassword. PstPassword provides 3 different passwords for each password-protected PST file. It’s possible that one of them will be the original password that you typed, and it’s also possible that none of these passwords will be identical to the original one. However, all 3 passwords provided by PstPassword will open the PST file !!
Recovering Instant Messenger Passwords
If you have lost your MSN Messenger, Google Talk, AIM, ICQ, Yahoo Messenger, Trillian, Miranda or Pidgin password, then Nirsoft’s MessenPass can reveal the password for you. MessenPass can only be used to recover the passwords for the currently logged-on user on your local computer, and it only works if you chose the remember your password in one of the above programs. You cannot use this utility for grabbing the passwords of other users.
Recovering Wi-fi Network password
If you have forgotten the network key you had used in the past to connect to a Wi-fi network on your computer, you can use Nirsoft’s WirelessKeyView to see all the networks your Windows PC has ever connected to using its default Wireless Zero Configuration mechanism. Note that this only recovers passwords already saved on your computer and does not work for getting the password for a new wi-fi network discovered by your computer.
Recovering Office Document passwords
We are unaware of any free utility which can recover passwords from Microsoft Excel, Word, Powerpoint, Access files. But if you don’t mind paying, then Elcomsoft’s Advanced Office Password Recovery will do the job for you.
Recovering ZIP and RAR file passwords
We are also unaware of any decent free utility which can recover passwords from ZIP or RAR files. But again if you don’t mind paying, then Elcomsoft’s Advanced Archive Password Recovery will do the job for you.
Recovering PDF file passwords
You can unlock PDF documents and remove editing, printing and copying restrictions instantly using Elcomsoft’s Advanced PDF Password Recovery. This is not a free program either.
Recovering Firefox stored usernames & passwords
PasswordFox is a small password recovery tool that allows you to view the user names and passwords stored by Mozilla Firefox Web browser. By default, PasswordFox displays the passwords stored in your current profile, but you can easily select to watch the passwords of any other Firefox profile.
Recovering Windows login passwords
This is the most trickiest of them all and its quite complicated. You will need to boot up using the Ophcrack Live CD. Ophcrack will detect all the users set up on your Windows systems, and reveal their passwords… only if the the password is less than 15 characters. If your password is 15 characters or more, this tool will not work.
Remember:
All the tools and utilities mentioned in this article should only be used for good purposes and not for cracking into unauthorised files or systems. We have covered the recovery tools for the most widely used applications. For an even more extensive list of free password recovery utilities, do visit Nirsoft’s Freeware password recovery utilities. For products not covered by Nirsoft, you can check out Elcomsoft’s Commercial password recovery tools.
good article!