---
name: "sampasswd"
section: "8"
platform: "linux"
package: "chntpw"
version: "140201-1.2"
release: "Debian 13 (Trixie)"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/sampasswd"
---

# sampasswd(8)

reset passwords of users in the SAM user database

## NAME

sampasswd - reset passwords of users in the SAM user database

## SYNOPSIS

**sampasswd** \[*options*\] -u*user* \<*samfile*\>\

## DESCRIPTION

This manual page documents briefly the **sampasswd** command. This manual page was written for the Debian distribution because the original program does not have a manual page.

**sampasswd** is a non-interactive command line utility that can reset a user's password and/or the user's account bits from the SAM user database file of a Microsoft Windows system (Windows NT, 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8.1, etc.). This file is usually located at \\WINDOWS\\system32\\config\\SAM on the file system of a Microsoft Windows  Operating System

On success, the program does not output any informatin and the exit code is 0.

## OPTIONS

- **-h**

  Show summary of options.

- **-r**

  Reset the user's password.

- **-a**

  Reset all the users. If this option is used there is no need to specify the next option.

- **-u \<user\>**

  User to change. The user value can be provided as a username, or a RID number in hexadecimal (if the username is preceded with '0x'). Usernames including international characters will probably not work.

- **-l**

  Lists the users in the SAM database.

- **-H**

  Output human readable output. The program by default will print a parsable table unless this option is used.

- **-N**

  Do not allocate more information, only allow the editing of existing values with same size.

- **-E**

  Do not expand the hive file (safe mode).

- **-t**

  Print debug information of allocated blocks.

- **-v**

  Print verbose information and debug messages.

## EXAMPLES

- **sampasswd -r -u theboss**

  Reset the password of a user named 'theboss', if found.

- **sampasswd -r -u 0x3ea**

  Reset the password of the user with RID '0x3a'.

- **samusrgrp -r -a**

  Reset the password of all the users in the Administrator's group (0x220)

- **samusrgrp -r -f**

  Reset the password of the administrative users with the lowest RID number. This does not include the built-in administrator (0x1f4) unless no other administrative user can be found in the database file.

## KNOWN BUGS

If the username includes international (non-ASCII) characters the program will not (usually) find it. Use the RID number instead.

## SEE ALSO

**chntpwd, reged, samusrgrp**\
 You will find  more information available on how this program works, in the text files */usr/share/doc/chntpw/README.txt* and */usr/share/doc/chntpw/MANUAL.txt*

More documentation is available at the upstream's author site: **http://pogostick.net/~pnh/ntpasswd/**

## AUTHOR

This program was written by Petter N Hagen.

This manual page was written by Javier Fernandez-Sanguino \<jfs@debian.org\>, for the Debian GNU/Linux system (but may be used by others).