It happens to every Sitecore developer at some point — you forget the admin password set during installation, or it was changed and nobody documented it. Without the password, your only option is usually a full reinstall. Fortunately, there's a much faster fix.

You can run a single SQL query directly against the Sitecore core database to reset the admin password back to the well-known default value of b. This works across all major Sitecore versions including 8, 9, 10.1, 10.2, and 10.3.

Steps to Reset the Sitecore Admin Password

Step 1 — Open the Sitecore core database in SSMS

Log into your SQL Server instance using SQL Server Management Studio. In the Object Explorer, expand the Databases node and select your Sitecore instance's core database. This is important — the query must run against core, not master or web.

Step 2 — Run the password reset query

Open a new query window and run the following SQL. It updates the aspnet_Membership table with the hashed value for password b, and also resets any account lockout caused by failed login attempts:

UPDATE [aspnet_Membership]
SET
    [Password]      = 'qOvF8m8F2IcWMvfOBjJYHmfLABc=',
    [PasswordSalt]  = 'OM5gu45RQuJ76itRvkSPFw==',
    [IsApproved]    = '1',
    [IsLockedOut]   = '0'
WHERE UserId IN (
    SELECT UserId
    FROM dbo.aspnet_Users
    WHERE UserName = 'sitecore\Admin'
)

Once the query executes successfully, you can log into Sitecore with:

Security Reminder

Once you're back in, change the admin password immediately to something strong. The password b is publicly known and should never remain in any environment accessible from outside your local network.

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