One of the most frustrating events that can happen in any system is forgetting your password and not being able to retrieve it.  DotNetNuke has a retrieval system built in, but you have to make sure your system can send mail in order to make use of it.

And even if it sends mail, it may be that you’ve taken over a system and the host account is not registered to you.

So, what do you do?

Well, you can’t look in the database for the password because the passwords are hashed.  But there are some ways to get back in business.

First, let’s take a look at the easy way.  Let’s assume that you have the ability to sign up for a new account with a new password.  Go ahead and do that.

Next, open the database and look for the “Users” table.  This table has a bit field called, “IsSuperUser.”  Set it to true.

Now, log in as that user via DNN and you should be able to administer your system.  I’d go ahead and reset the original host and admin passwords.

If you haven’t allowed public signup for any of your DNN sites, you’ll have to enable public access by going into the database and looking for the “Portals” table.

In the “Portals” table there is a field called “UserRegistration.” If you set this field to 2, you will be able to sign up as a new user.

Of course, if you don’t have access to the database, you are stuck. But, if you don’t have access to the database, you probably have no business trying to retrieve the host password either.