Top password recovery tools for Microsoft products

We’ve all been in that nightmare situation where we’ve lost a password for an important application in Windows. If you’re currently trying to frantically remember what the hell your password for a certain Microsoft product is, don’t fret because help is at hand. Softonic has several password recovery programs that can help you out of a crisis and this shortlist have proved the most effective for me.

Cain & Abel is a password recovery tool that works across Microsoft Operating Systems. It can pick up just about any password used within a Windows environment by sniffing the network, cracking encrypted passwords, brute-force, revealing password boxes and analyzing routing protocols.

MSN Messenger Password Recovery helps find that elusive password that you use to log-onto MSN Messenger. This is often a problem if you usually have your password saved in messenger and then one day are prompted for it but can’t remember. Note the program only works when the “Remember my Password” tick-box is checked in the messenger.

Advanced Office Password Recovery (AOPR) helps you recover lost or forgotten passwords to files and documents created in Microsoft Office applications including Word, Excel and Access. However, it only works up to Office 2003 although you may experience limited success with it in later versions.

Note that the developers of these programs have designed them for genuine cases of password loss and are not intended to spy or steal other people’s passwords.