How does AIM Password Recovery Work?

AIM password recovery works by one of two methods:

Resetting your AIM password online
Recovering stored passwords from the Windows Registry

Reset your AIM password

The easiest way to recover an AIM password is to visit the AOL Lost Your Password? page.

To use this page, enter your AOL screen name and AOL will e-mail your AIM password to the e-mail account associated with it.

If you no longer have access to the e-mail account associated with the screen name, AOL will refuse to assist you.

For AOL subscribers only: If your AIM screen name is also your AOL screen name, you can reset your AIM password at Keyword: AIM Password.

AIM Password Recovery from the Windows Registry

AIM clients before 4.8 stored the AIM password in the Windows registry. For AIM clients before 4.8, password recovery was possible simply by reading the Windows registry.

Starting with version 4.8, the AIM client only stores a hash of the AIM password in the registry. Because of this, AIM password recovery from the registry is not possible with AIM client 4.8 or higher.

Several programs, with widely varying capabilities, are available to help you recover a lost AIM password from an older revision of the AIM client: