If you like to tinker around a bit in Windows, the command prompt lets you do a lot of things pretty easily. This is especially true for changing the password for a Windows account.
In fact, the Windows “net user” command allows you to modify the account passwords users of your PC directly from your command prompt window. You can thus define a new word password for the user account of your choice without having to navigate through the configuration menus. We will show you how to do it and you will see, it is not very complicated.
What you need to know to change a password from the command prompt
Before you start, there are two things to check and keep in mind.
First, the order net user requires administrator access, which means you need to use an administrator account to use this command. You can then use it to change passwords for your own account as well as other accounts.
Also note that this command will only allows you to change your local account password. If you use a Microsoft account with your PC, you'll need to use another method to change your password.
That being said, we can now move on to serious matters.
Use the net user command to change the password of a Windows account
To get started, open the “Start” menu. In this menu, search for “Command Prompt” or “cmd.”
Right-click on “Command Prompt” and select “Run as administrator”.
In the Command Prompt window, type the command shown below and press Enter to validate. In this command, replace USER with the username whose password you want to change and NEW_PASSWORD with the new password you want to use.
net user USER NEW_PASSWORD
Small note, if your username contains one or more spaces (like "Lulu's Computer") put it in quotation marks like this:
net user "Lulu's Computer" PasswordSuperHard
If you are not sure what your username is, you can display a list of users on the computer by typing the following code into the command prompt:
net user
Finally, if you want to make password changes discreetly without it being displayed on the screen, you can use theasterisk to hide password :
net user USER *
Here again, you will obviously have to replace USERNAME in the command with the user name whose password you wish to update.
Then press “Enter”. You will then be prompted to type the new password twice, but you will not see any text appear on the screen. Then, the command prompt will display a success message indicating that your password has been changed successfully.
And that's all.
When you now log in to your account on your Windows PC, you will use the newly created password. Now you know how change windows account password from the command prompt!
Article updated on May 7, 2025 by Byothe
