Lost Password - Can't get in via Putty

Hello everyone,

I’m new to HA. I have been logging into HA using a bookmark in my browser and my username and password were being entered automatically and now they’re gone.

(turns out the username and password were saved in the browser and not my password manager BitWarden, as I had assumed… and I cleared my browser cache… doh!)

I only installed HA recently (so I have one of the latest versions of Home Assistant OS on Raspberry Pi) using the recommended method here Raspberry Pi - Home Assistant

I check how to ‘reset’ the username and password - and I see about using Putty - which I have used before to get into HA when first setting it up. I try to login to the Raspberry Pi via Putty using the saved profile in Putty but I get the error

PuTTY Fatal Error
Network error: Connection refused

Using Putty I can login to other servers I use to host websites online, so putty is working in that way.

I also know for certain the I.P. Address is fine. I’m able to ping the Pi’s IP address and I can see the IP address in the router and using a network scanning app.

I’m using Windows 10 and I completely disabled Windows Firewall.

Of course I also completely rebooted the PC & Raspberry Pi & Router

Now I’m lost. My only remaining option is to format the Pi’s flash disk and reinstall Hass.