"Vboxuser" password help for W10 VM

[Wizzle]

Hi,

I don't recall creating a password for the Windows 10 VM I made with Virtual Box, and after my PC shut down I tried opening back up my VM to be met with a login screen for "vboxuser", and I can not remember any password being associated with it. I tried passwords like "changeme" and others I found on VirtualBox related questions for similar issues, and haven't been met with a solution. I wanted to know if anything can be done to log back into this VM again or if it is all lost at this point.

Thank you!

[mpack]

You have to choose a username and password when you install Win10. The only time you may not see one is if you choose an unattended install and also ignore the username and password fields in the VirtualBox "Unattended Install" dialog. In that case the user is "vboxuser" and the password is "changeme".

You are lucky that VirtualBox doesn't follow the guidance the likes of the EU forces on Chinese goods: no default passwords, they have to choose an 8 digit random number!

You should change both username and password, asap. Or scrap that VM and do it again, paying attention to what's in the dialogs!

[Wizzle]

Unfortunately "changeme" isn't working, so is it possible to reset the password? Or maybe boot up and old save state of the VM?

[mpack]

is it possible to reset the password?

That is a Windows support question, I suggest you Google for answers to "windows 10 forgot password". A VM has no special solutions to the problem. Or just start again as I suggested previously.

[Wizzle]

Sure thing! And it's not possible to try and boot up a past save state? If not I think that's the last option I have, and if so thank you for your time!

[mpack]

If you have a past saved state to restore from then certainly you can try it. Often however, Windows will recognize that time has passed and will give the lock screen - meaning you need the password again.

[QuadStack]

You have to choose a username and password when you install Win10. The only time you may not see one is if you choose an unattended install and also ignore the username and password fields in the VirtualBox "Unattended Install" dialog. In that case the user is "vboxuser" and the password is "changeme".

You are lucky that VirtualBox doesn't follow the guidance the likes of the EU forces on Chinese goods: no default passwords, they have to choose an 8 digit random number!

You should change both username and password, asap. Or scrap that VM and do it again, paying attention to what's in the dialogs!

Thank you!! 'changeme' worked like a charm!

[kmontoya87]

I just ran into this for the default local user vBoxUser - in case anyone else lands in the same situation, where after not rebooting for sometime and then randomly on a reboot finding out that you hit the default threshold for a Windows 10 local user account password age policy setting, thus requiring a modified password in order to login again. Since I had done the 'unattended' install of Windows 10, I didn't think I had entered a custom password, but the default for the vBoxUser: "changeme", unfortunately was not working.

To solve this particular situation - making sure the VM is powered off, find the VDI file associated with the VM in question to confirm the original install date, then on the host machine temporarily change the system date to something close to the original install date, I did a random 14 days (note: my host machine was not on the internet, so it may require temporarily disabling any outside connections so that it doesn't end up hitting a time server and reversing the change back to your current time).

This should at least allow you to boot the VM with the automated login process working again. Then the easiest method to change the password without requiring the original and can be done on any edition of Windows 10 is by launching PowerShell or CMD as an Administrator and running this simple command below:

\> NET USER [username] [new-password]