"I recently got a new computer and as I was setting up my email account I couldn't figure out what my email password is. Outlook Express doesn't seem to show my password on my old computer. Is there any way I can recover my email password?"
There are several steps you should take to recover your email password. First, go to the source. Check the site of your email provider and see if they have an easy automated solution for recovering your password. You may have setup a security question there, if so, use it. If you still can't find the password, look for a customer service number. If you're using a service like Hotmail, Yahoo, or Gmail, there won't be any customer service to call. My friend Leo offers some strong words regarding free email accounts and lost passwords. The third solution (which I have used on occasion) is to resort to password recovery software. For about $20, you can recover email passwords, recover Windows user passwords, find the BIOS password and CMOS passwords for your motherboard, and often find your password for online email services as well.
The solution I've used for this in the past for recovering a variety of passwords is
Spotmau Password Genius. It's currently priced at $19.95 and has successfully recovered passwords on the several occasions I've attempted using it. Unfortunately it does not have a free trial, but I suppose the company assumes you need a password and $20 is a small price to pay to get it back.
The trickiest part about Password Genius is you have to create a bootable CD from the download because it operates independent of Windows. The directions are fairly straight forward and instructions are included along with an app that handles burning the disk.
Once you create the disk, the software looks for passwords stored locally on your computer, and in several cases, I got it to find passwords I didn't think would still be there. There's no guarantee it will find every password, but I've had enough success with it that risking $20 is a fairly safe bet when compared with the frustration of being locked out of your account permanently.
