Windows 11/10 has a built-in feature to add security questions for a local account. It helps to reset your local account password in case you forget it. While some users skip security questions during local account set up, other users set up their Windows local accounts with them. Windows 11/10 stores all those security questions and answers in the Registry (under Config folder in System32 directory) and there is no built-in option to view them as plain text.
In case you have forgotten the security questions and answers set by you, then this tutorial can be helpful. You can view as well as save your security questions and answers as TXT, XML, CSV, JSON, or CSV file.
View Security Questions & Answers for Local Account
There is a very simple tool ‘SecurityQuestionsView‘ that lets you view and save security questions and answers to all your local accounts. You just need to follow some very simple steps:
- Download SecurityQuestionsView tool
- Launch the tool with admin rights
- Load security questions using Advanced Options
- View all security questions and answers
- Save all or selected questions and answers.
First of all, you have to grab the zip file of this SecurityQuestionsView tool.
After that, extract the downloaded zip in a folder and access that folder. Right-click on SecurityQuestionsView.exe file and select Run as administrator option. It will launch the interface of this tool. It is a portable tool so installation is not needed.
The tool interface is opened with Advanced Options box. In that box, you will have two options in a drop-down menu: Load security questions from your local system and Load security questions from external drive. Use the first option and press OK button.
In case, your Windows 10 local account is set up in some external drive (say portable hard disk), then use the second option, and connect the external drive. After that, provide the correct path of Config folder (like H:\Windows\System32\Config) in the given box to fetch the list of security questions and answers.
When the path is provided, click the OK button.
Now the interface of this tool will show the list of security questions and their answers. It doesn’t matter if you have single or multiple local accounts in your Windows 10 PC, it will show all of them. The interface also shows desktop username, question number, and user SID.
It’s time to save your local account security questions and answers so that you can access them anytime.
You can select all questions using Ctrl+A shortcut key or select questions of your choice. After that, access the File menu, and click on the Save Selected Items option. Or else, you can also use Save button available on its interface.
When Save As window is opened, provide the output location, file name, and file type (HTML, TXT, CSV, etc.).
Finally, use the Save button. This way you can save all the selected security questions and answers in any of the supported formats.
That’s all. Go here to download SecurityQuestionsView.
You can easily create a local account in Windows along with security questions. But, the problem occurs when you forget answers to those questions.
Hope this tutorial will help you in such a case.
