Howto Recover forgotten passwords stored by Internet Explorer 8/7/6

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The Internet Explorer stores the passwords, which you have chosen to save, in encrypted form in the Registry. And as such, should you forget any and should you want to recover such forgotten or lost passwords, you can easily do so by viewing them with the help of this small freeware utility called IE PassView. With its help you can also edit or delete passwords.

IE PassView is a small utility that reveals the passwords stored by Internet Explorer browser. It supports the new version of Internet Explorer 7.0, the Beta version of Internet Explorer 8.0, as well as older versions of Internet Explorer, v4.0 – v6.0

Using IE PassView

IE PassView doesn’t require any installation process or additional DLLs. In order to start using it, just copy the executable file (iepv.exe) to any folder like, and run it. After running iepv.exe, IE PassView scans all Internet Explorer passwords in your system, and display them on the main window.

Types Of Passwords

IE PassView utility can recover 3 types of passwords:

AutoComplete Passwords: When you enter a Web page that contains a form with user/password fields and a login button, Internet Explorer may ask you if you want to save the password, after pressing the login button. If you choose to save the password, the password is saved as AutoComplete password.

Be aware that some Web sites (like Yahoo login page) deliberately disable the AutoComplete feature, in order to avoid password stealing by other users.

HTTP Authentication Passwords: Some Web sites allow the user to enter only after typing user and password in a separated dialog-box. If you choose to save the password in this login dialog-box, the password is saved as HTTP authentication password.

FTP Passwords: Simply the passwords of FTP addresses (ftp://…)

Known Issues With Internet Explorer 7.0

Starting from version 7.0 of Internet Explorer, Microsoft completely changed the way that passwords are saved. In previous versions (4.0 – 6.0), all passwords were saved in a special location in the Registry known as the “Protected Storage”.

In version 7.0 of Internet Explorer, passwords are saved in different locations, depending on the type of password. Each type of passwords has some limitations in password recovery:

AutoComplete Passwords: These passwords are saved in the following location in the Registry:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\IntelliForms\Storage2

The passwords are encrypted with the URL of the Web sites that asked for the passwords, and thus they can only be recovered if the URLs are stored in the history file. If you clear the history file, IE PassView won’t be able to recover the passwords until you visit again the Web sites the asked for the passwords. Alternatively, you can add a list of URLs of Web sites that requires user name/password into the Web sites file (see below).
HTTP Authentication Passwords: These passwords are stored in the Credentials file under Documents and Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Credentials , together with login passwords of LAN computers and other passwords.

Due to security limitations, IE PassView can recover these passwords only if you have administrator rights.

Download IEpassview from here

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