PassNow

PassNow is intended mainly for recovering data you may have lost due to various types of system failure or accidental password loss.

Thus, the tool can help you reset your password, backup data from your hard disk and repair various types of bootup problems. Likewise, it can help preserve your privacy by supporting secure data deletion.

The correct use of the tool depends on performing a series of steps, which may imply some difficulties for unskilled users. Luckily, there is a sort of initial tutorial to teach you the basics. The first thing you should do is to create a recovery disk, which can be done with a USB stick or an optic disc. In fact, this is all the Windows-based tool can do: it prepares the selected media to boot your computer and copies the necessary programs to it.

Then, you can use the disk you have just created to boot the computer which you cannot start or login to. Since the tool is actually a Linux program, it can access whatever is on your hard disk. One of the most frequent operations is resetting Windows administrator password, and it can identify other accounts as well. Similarly, the tool can retrieve specific data or even the entire drive. Moreover, in case disk damage is suspected, it can be used to perform a scan and repair errors. Besides, it can deal with bootup issues like those arising from defective MBR boot records and DBR error parameters. It is excellent that it can also reset BIOS passwords. Finally, it is possible to wipe disk data to protect sensitive information.

Unfortunately, there are user reports that claim that the tool did not work as expected as it failed to work on some operating system versions.

Good news is that PassNow is available for trial. However, the free version has some limitations that make it practically useless. Probably, the most significant drawback is that, while it may identify the accounts on your Windows system, it does not let you reset the login password. Similarly, other features, such as data backup, hard disk scan, drive erase, BIOS password reset and Windows recovery are not supported either.