What Credential Manager stores and where
The applet splits into Web Credentials and Windows Credentials. The web pane holds logins that Internet Explorer and the old, pre-Chromium Edge saved, plus entries some desktop tools write themselves; each entry shows the site, username and password, and the Show link reveals the password after you confirm your Windows identity. The Windows pane holds generic credentials — network drives, printers, Git servers, VPN clients — alongside certificate-based and domain credentials, and none of them can be displayed, only edited or removed, because they're stored as working material for the services that use them.
On disk, the vault lives in your user profile: %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Credentials and the Vault folders under %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Vault, encrypted per user with Windows DPAPI. That's why a vault copied from another account — or from a machine where that account no longer exists — reads as unreadable binary noise, and why the backup flow asks you to press Ctrl+Alt+Del before it writes the .crd file. Chromium browsers, Edge included, keep their own password stores and never appear here.
- Web Credentials: logins saved by IE and legacy Edge — passwords viewable via Show
- Windows Credentials: shares, servers, certificates, app logins — not viewable
- Vault files live in %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Credentials and %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Vault, DPAPI-encrypted
- Back up Credentials writes a portable .crd file after a Ctrl+Alt+Del check
- Chromium browsers (Chrome, new Edge) store passwords separately, not here
Viewing, removing and backing up entries
Open it by typing credential manager into Start, or via Control Panel > User Accounts > Credential Manager; control /name Microsoft.CredentialManager jumps there straight from the Run box, and rundll32.exe keymgr.dll,KRShowKeyMgr opens the compact legacy dialog. To see a web password, expand the entry, click Show and confirm your identity; to drop an entry — web or Windows — expand it, click Remove and confirm. Generic credentials also offer Edit, which is the quick fix when a saved password has changed: overwrite the old one instead of deleting and re-adding it.
For moving machines, Back up Credentials at the top of the Windows pane walks you through saving a .crd file, typically to removable media; on the new PC, Restore Credentials reads the file back after asking for the password of the account that created it. Treat .crd files like plain passwords, because anyone holding the file plus your Windows password can import it. And when a network share or intranet site keeps demanding a login, the classic culprit is a stale generic credential with the wrong username — remove it and Windows asks afresh.
When to prune the vault
Audit the list whenever you leave a job, hand a machine to a colleague, or spot entries for servers you no longer reach — every surviving credential is a key that works without asking. Web credentials deserve the same scepticism as browser-saved passwords: if an entry predates a password rotation or a service you've closed, remove it so apps fall back to a fresh prompt instead of a silent old login. There is no scheduled cleanup for this vault, and that's by design; the honest maintenance is a five-minute manual review a couple of times a year, not a tool that deletes credentials for you.
Questions and Answers
Does Windows Credential Manager store my Chrome or Edge passwords?
No. Modern Chromium browsers keep their own encrypted stores. Only Internet Explorer and the legacy, pre-Chromium Edge wrote logins into Credential Manager's web pane.
How do I back up saved credentials to another PC?
In the Windows Credentials pane click Back up Credentials, confirm the Ctrl+Alt+Del prompt and save the .crd file; on the target machine use Restore Credentials and enter the original account's password.
Can I see the password of a Windows credential, like a network share login?
No. Windows credentials can't be revealed; you can only edit them to a new value or remove them. Only web credentials have the Show option.
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