Retrieving and Resetting coldfusion administrator password

Lost Coldfusion Administrator passwords? you can reset them easily, there are different ways of doing it on CF 4.5 and CF 5, and on later versions of Coldfusion MX 6,7 and CF 8.

How to reset password for CF 4.5, 5 - The password information is stored in REGISTRY for this version of coldfuison, You can't get the password as it is encripted. But you can reset them, 2 ways to do it

1. Go to Run -> Regedit
2. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -> SOFTWARE -> Allaire -> Coldfusion -> Currentversion
3. Right click on Currentversin and FIND -> useadminpassword.
4. Change the key value from 1 to 0.

The above will allow you to login to coldfusion administrator without any password, you can reset it again.

second method is to use <cfregistery action="set">, use the following
<cfregistry
action="set"
value="0"
type="string"
entry="UseAdminPassword" branch="HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Allaire\Coldfusion\Currentversion\server">

that will allow you to login to the coldfusion administrator without using any password.

Now, you can also reset the password for Coldfusion MX6, 7 and CF 8. In these version of coldfusion the password is NOT stored in registry, but in XML config files, you just need to know where they are located. Use the following steps

1. Go to your coldfusion server root -> lib
2. search for the file "neo-security.xml"
3. Search for "<var name="'admin.security.enabled'"><boolean value="'true'/"></var>" , change boolean value ='false'.

that's ALL, it will allow you to login without any password to coldfusion administrator, simple :-)