How to backup and restore windows 8 usernames and passwords

Here is a simple tutorial about how to backup your windows 8 user names and passwords. In many cases you might have forgotten your windows password for many reasons. Keeping your usernames and passwords in a thumb drive might not be a good choice and writhing somewhere too. Once you backed up all the usernames and passwords in local computer, I suggest you to keep the credential file in your mail or something.Please note that this tutorial is aimed at windows 8 users and I am not sure about windows XP, Vista

Step 1:

   Open start and search for “run” (Without Quotes) and select the run and press enter. That will show you the run window. You can also open the same dialogue by pressing “Windows + R”. Another option is to open DOS Prompt. You just type “cmd” (Without Quotes) in the search in the start screen. I suggest run, because it is the most convenient method for most users. This is only because of the simplicity of the run window and more over that, most of the windows users might have familiar with the run dialogue. Usually run is used by the administrators. This is the reason why run is not so much user friendly. As you can see in the following image there will be only one text box for typing commands. Sorry I forgot to tell you that why run is useful to us? Run is only used for executing Executable files. You can specify arguments while you type the name of the desired application. When you are required to open some application in safe mode, then you might have to approach the run.

Step 2:

So you opened the run dialogue. Now it’s time to run the executable file for backing up the usernames and passwords. To open the “password and username backup wizard” Type “credwiz” in the open text box of the run dialogue and hit enter button. Now you will get a window with two options. This first option “Backup your stored user names and passwords” will help you to backup your username and password in the current windows operating system. And the second option “Restore your stored usernames and passwords” will help you to restore any previously backed up passwords and username by this tool from a pen drive or hard disk location. Here we want to backup our usernames and passwords, so let us choose the first option. Check out the following screen shot.

And press the next button that will guide you to the next step of the backup process. Once you pressed the next button you will get a window asking where to save the backup usernames and passwords file. Here you can see a warning message about the storage location of the backup file by windows. They says that keeping the credentials  files in the computer hard disk is not secure and they are suggesting that to keep them in removable medias like SD Cards and flash drives. Now choose your desired location by pressing the browse button in the current window. There you have to specify the name of the backup of the credential file.

Step 3:

After choosing the location and specifying the name you have to press next button. Now you can see a window requiring a CTRL+ALT+DELETE key combination. Press the above specified key combination then you will get only a windows with entire screen with black background. Here you need to enter the password to secure the credential file itself. Please not that the password you should enter at the time of backup is not your windows password and this is only used for unlocking the backup file at the time of usernames and passwords restoration.

Step 4"

Finish. You can see your backup file in the location you specified at the time of the backup process with an extension of “.crd”. Running the same in the run windows will help you to restore the windows password.