How do I change the password of another user without having to sign in as them?

Here’s a quick trick: You are signed in as yourself, but you need to change the password for another account, say, a service account. You could change the account by doing this:

• Add the account to your machine.
• Sign in as that user.
• Change the password.
• Sign out.
• Sign back in as yourself.

But that’s a lot of work, and it adds the account to your machine just to change its password.

Here’s the trick: You can change the password directly from the password change dialog.

• Hit Ctrl+Alt+Del.
• Select Change a password.
• On the Change a password screen, focus defaults to the Old password edit box, but you can go up to the account name box and change the account name to the account whose password you want to change.
• Enter the account name, the old password, and the new password.

Bingo, you changed somebody else’s password without having to sign out or even add them to your local machine.