A forgotten password is annoying but almost always solvable. It depends which password it is.
An email password
On the sign-in page look for Forgot password. The service sends you a code — either to your phone or to a backup email address you entered at some point.
Here is where it tends to go wrong: people have a number listed as their backup contact that they no longer have. Recovery then becomes difficult and sometimes impossible. So go through your backup contacts while you can still sign in. It takes five minutes and one day it will save your account.
A Windows password
It depends which kind of account you use. If you sign in with an email address, it is a Microsoft account and you reset the password on their website from another device. After a restart you sign in with the new one.
If you sign in with just a name and no email, it is a local account and recovery is considerably worse. Without a backup or a prepared key it means intervening in the system itself. That is a job for me — and there is plenty that can go wrong, so I would not attempt it from a guide found online.
An online banking password
Do not guess at this one. After several wrong attempts access is blocked, which is as it should be. Ring the bank's helpline — the number is on the back of your card or on their website. Never a number from an email or a text message.
A Wi-Fi password
The easiest case. It is usually on the sticker underneath the router next to WPA key or Wi-Fi password. If the sticker is missing and you have one computer connected, the password can be read out of it.
Making life easier in future
I am not going to tell you to memorise twenty different passwords. That does not work. What does:
- A password manager — a program that remembers passwords for you and fills them in itself. You remember one single password. It is safer than anything you would come up with yourself.
- A notebook in a drawer beats using the same password everywhere. It is not ideal, but a thief on the internet cannot reach into your drawer.
- Email matters most. Anyone who gets into your mailbox can reset the passwords to everything else through it. Protect that one above all.
Two-factor authentication
With it switched on, a password alone is not enough to get in — a code comes to your phone as well. I recommend having it at least on your email and your bank. Signing in takes a few seconds longer, but a stolen password on its own then gets nobody anywhere.
I can help with recovering passwords and with setting up a password manager. One warning, though — I will never ring you first and I will never ask you to read a password out to me. Anyone who does is not me.