Reset password of Windows Subsystem For Linux user

Do you still remember your password?

Okay, let check by this simple trick: execute sudo command like

sudo cat /etc/shadow

then you have to enter your password, if not correct then follow steps below.

Check your installed version of Ubuntu

I’m using Ubuntu in this post, for other distro it’a all the same (gg for more details)

by go to

%userprofile%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps

or exec dir command:

dir %userprofile%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps

will get this sort of result:

 Volume in drive C has no label.
 Volume Serial Number is F868-A53E

 Directory of C:\Users\xxx\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps

07/05/2019  10:15 PM    <DIR>          Backup
...
07/26/2019  11:13 PM                 0 ubuntu1804.exe
               6 File(s)              0 bytes
               6 Dir(s)  71,374,589,952 bytes free

if there is a ubuntu1804.exe then use the ubuntu1804 command, ubuntu.exe then ubuntu, etc.

Reset user password

1. Change default user to root

open cmd and run this command:

ubuntu1804 config --default-user root

again, my distro version is ubuntu1804

2. Reset password

launch your ubuntu and exec the command to reset the user’s password, say user demo

passwd demo

enter your new password

3. Change default user back

exec this command:

ubuntu config --default-user <username>

in this case the username is demo

ubuntu config --default-user demo

after that, you can verify your password with command sudo cat /etc/shadow again.

That’s all.