Forgot Admin Password on Postgres (Windows Installation), can't reset

Question

I have a Windows PostgreSQL installation.

According to some posts, there is no default password set for the \'postgres\' user yet I can\'t connect using an empty pa

Answer 1

Update your pg_hba.conf file to allow for trusted local connections

[root@server] vim pg_hba.conf
>> local all all         trust

then restart your PostgreSQL server

[user@machine] pg_ctl -D C:\PostgreSQL\data restart    (Windows)
[root@server] service postgresql restart            (Linux)

at this point you can connect to your server as postgres user using a local connection without the need to enter a password (omitting the -h parameter when calling the psql command will use a local connection - if you pass -h then this will match the line host all all 0.0.0.0/0 <method> in your pg_hba.conf file)

[root@server] psql -U postgres

You can then alter the postgres user role and set the password to whatever you like using the following command in the psql terminal

[psql] alter role postgres password <new_password>;

Once this is done you can restart your PostgreSQL server again

[user@machine] pg_ctl -D C:\PostgreSQL\data restart     (Windows)
[root@server] service postgresql restart             (Linux)

and at this point your password should be changed to the new password

Answer 2

I was having the same issue and I couldn't use Postgres in the CLI on my windows machine but I managed to trace down where the passwords were stored via

%APPDATA%\PostgreSQL\pgpass.conf 

NB: You must have selected store password option when creating a server or database in the pgAdmin.

I hope this helps. Thanks.

Answer 3

Based on AK47's answer and some additional info I fixed it by doing the following,

1) Stop Postgres if currently running, command line below. Need to give it the 'data' dir. In my case C:\PostgreSQL\data

pg_ctl -D C:\PostgreSQL\data stop

2) Edit the file pg_hba.conf (it's also in the \data dir) as follows:

As AK40 wrote, change all MD5 references to trust , e.g.

# TYPE  DATABASE        USER            ADDRESS                 METHOD

# IPv4 local connections:
host    all             all             127.0.0.1/32            trust
# IPv6 local connections:
host    all             all             ::1/128                 trust
# Allow replication connections from localhost, by a user with the
# replication privilege.
host    replication     all             127.0.0.1/32            trust
host    replication     all             ::1/128                 trust

3) Now run

psql -U postgres

4) In the PG Command Prompt that appears type,

ALTER USER Postgres WITH PASSWORD '<newpassword>';

5) Save this by typing wq enter to exit the PG Prompt

6) Now start Postgres

pg_ctl -D C:\PostgreSQL\data start

7) Might want to revert the MD5 -> Trust change later in the pg_hba.conf.