How do you reset the SA password?

Question

How on earth do you reset the sa password? I know how to go into the dialogs and reset a password. That\'s now what I\'m asking about. It runs a little deeper than just clic

Answer 1

people also can try to change password this way by the below SP

EXEC sp_password NULL, 'yourpassword', 'sa'

hope may help other. thanks

Answer 2

You could use: Reset-DbaAdmin Powershell cmdlet from https://dbatools.io.

This function allows administrators to regain access to local or remote SQL Servers by either resetting the sa password, adding sysadmin role to existing login, or adding a new login (SQL or Windows) and granting it sysadmin privileges.

This is accomplished by stopping the SQL services or SQL Clustered Resource Group, then restarting SQL via the command-line using the /mReset-DbaAdmin paramter which starts the server in Single-User mode, and only allows this script to connect.

Using Reset-DbaAdmin will restart your SQL Server.

Reset-DbaAdmin -SqlServer sqlcluster

Answer 3

This should help: start SQL Server in single-user mode. This will allow local administrators to connect as a sysadmin fixed server role. A detailed description of how to do this can be found here.

Answer 4

The simplest method I've found so far is to run SQL Server Management Studio / SQL Express under the SYSTEM context with Sysinternals PSEXEC app. After installing (copying psexec.exe to your computer, running it and accepting the EULA), you can type the following to invoke a system-context instance:

psexec -s -i <path to ssms.exe/sqlservr.exe>

You can use the GUI and don't require single-user mode to effect changes. I had problems with an unknown client tying up the snigle-user connection and this saved me.