Retrieving and Resetting ColdFusion Administrator Passwords

Posted on February 19, 2004 by Brandon Harper

Seems like this question comes-up quite a bit, and I can never seem to find the snippet of code which will do this in CF 5, so I thought I’d leave myself a post of this snippet of code, and perhaps someone else out there in the future trying to find information on how to reset their administrator password. That said, here are a few ways to get back into the CF Administrator if you’ve somehow been inadvertently locked-out for both ColdFusion 5 and previous versions, as well as ColdFusion MX:

For ColdFusion 5 on Windows:

Find the following registry entry:

PLAIN TEXT
CODE:
  1. HKLM\SOFTWARE\Allaire\ColdFusion\CurrentVersion\Server\UseAdminPassword

And set it to 0. Restart the ColdFusion Server service, and go to the Administrator to set a new password.

OR:

Use this code snippet to retrieve the password values:

PLAIN TEXT
CODE:
  1. <cfset password_key=“4p0L@r1$”>
  2. <cfregistry action=“GET” branch=“HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Allaire\ColdFusion\CurrentVersion\Server” entry=“AdminPassword” variable=“adminpassword” type=“String”>
  3. </cfregistry><cfregistry action=“GET” branch=“HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Allaire\ColdFusion\CurrentVersion\Server” entry=“StudioPassword” variable=“studiopassword” type=“String”>
  4. <cfoutput>
  5.     <strong>Admin Password:</strong><br />
  6.     #Evaluate(“cfusion_Decrypt(adminpassword, PASSWORD_KEY)”)# <br /><br />
  7.     <strong>RDS Password:</strong> <br />
  8.     #Evaluate(“cfusion_Decrypt(studiopassword, PASSWORD_KEY)”)# <br /><br />
  9. </cfoutput>
  10. </cfregistry>

For ColdFusion 6 MX, ColdFusion 7 MX, and ColdFusion 8:

  • Stop the “ColdFusion MX Application Server” Service
  • Open the “neo-security.xml” file contained at %CFMXInstallRoot%\lib
  • Find the line: “<var name=’admin.security.enabled’><boolean value=’true’/></var>” and change the true to false, then save the file
  • Restart the “ColdFusion MX Application Server” Service
  • Go to the ColdFusion Administrator again and set a password

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9 Responses to "Retrieving and Resetting ColdFusion Administrator Passwords"

  • By Blog-Fu June 18, 2004 - 10:13 am

    Forgetting an Admin password is generally bad.

    Okay. I had apparantly forgot the Admin password for my localhost ColdFusion Server. That's a bad thing. Luckily I found how to resetting ColdFusion Administrator Passwords. Whew....

    Reply
  • By CLM February 23, 2007 - 12:04 am

    THANK YOU Brandon!!

    CLM

    Reply
  • By Lance July 17, 2007 - 12:36 pm

    Thanks, but you should change your title to say WINDOWS as all you wrote was that, and it appeared on a search with linux in the title.... so thanks!

    Reply
  • By Sean Harrison September 17, 2007 - 6:13 am

    Hey man - that final /CFRegistry tag should be on line 4. :)

    Reply
  • By Amaacnt January 20, 2008 - 7:21 am

    Thanks a lot.

    Reply
  • By Wesley Hall July 31, 2008 - 5:02 am

    Thanks alot! I read a different set of instruction that left out restarting the CF service. This did the trick.

    Reply
  • By OneLineAtATime December 3, 2009 - 7:11 am

    Save my A**! thanks

    Reply
  • By Todd December 29, 2010 - 10:56 pm

    awesome. Perfect!

    Reply
  • By Admin SSC June 24, 2011 - 9:00 am

    Thank you. This was helpful!

    Reply

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