How Do I Recover a Lost Joomla Administrator Password

August 13, 2009

Lost passwords are the bane of my existence. Luckily, lots of places offer password recovery options. A Joomla 1.0.0 site for a long time client of mine wasn’t one of those sites. Given that the password is hashed, there’s no real way to recover it, but you can reset it; so, here’s how I reset my password:

  1. Try to guess password several times, no luck
  2. Look up username:
    USE `joomla`;
    SELECT `id`, `username` FROM `tbl_users`;
  3. Try a few more times to guess the password, using the correct username (admin by default, not the case for me)
  4. Look up the hashed password:
    USE `joomla`;
    SELECT `id`, `username`, `password` FROM `tbl_users`;
  5. Look up what type of hash Joomla uses. It looked like MD5 and it was.
  6. Generate a new password:
    USE `joomla`;
    UPDATE `tbl_users` SET `password` = MD5('new_password_here') WHERE `id` = 'selected_id_here';
  7. You may now log in with your new_password_here

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