How do you recover a lost password on a Blackberry Pearl 8100?

You cannot recover it. You can reset it but that wipes the BB clean of ALL data. Reset by entering the "wrong" passWord 10 times. Hopefully you've been backing up your data? After the reset simply reload from the backup.

Someone tried to use wrong passWords on my BB9700 bold, and it went to the level where the device was going to be formatted and data was about to be cleared. I only had to type 'blackberry'. Luckily, few days back I had installed the Desktop manager for Blackberry. I connected my BB to the laptop and it asked me for the passWord. I knew the passWord and I logged in thru my PC. It simply updated the software after taking the full backup of the device. And when the BB restarted, VIOLA!!! the cycle of 10 passWords got reset. I again got the fresh cycle of 10 passWords and I applied the correct passWord.

I saved my device from being cleared!!!!

Update: Recently, it happened again and this time it was my BB 9900 bold...The trick worked for this one too!!! It has been a helpful tip to many users. I'll post this tip separately for BB devices now.