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

# samunlock(8)

unlock users in the SAM user database

## NAME

samunlock - unlock users in the SAM user database

## SYNOPSIS

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

## DESCRIPTION

This manual page documents briefly the **samunlock** command.

**samunlock** is a non-interactive command line utility that can unlock a user 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.

- **-U**

  Unlock the user.

- **-a**

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

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

  User to unlock. 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

- **samunlock -U -u theboss**

  Unlock an user named 'theboss', if found.

- **samunlock -U -u 0x3ea**

  Unlock an user with RID '0x3a'.

## 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 non upstream's author site: **https://github.com/rescatux/chntpw**

## AUTHOR

This program was written by Adrian Gibanel Lopez.

This manual page was written by Adrian Gibanel Lopez \<adrian15sgd@gmail.com\>, for the Debian GNU/Linux system (but may be used by others).