What to check when being unable to login CMSDesk/CMSSiteManager interface.

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This article describes how you can restore your access to the CMSDesk or CMSSiteManager interface if you lose or forgot your password.
If you forget or lose your password and cannot login to the CMS interface, you can either contact your site’s admin and ask to reset your password, or you can clear the password directly in the CMS_User table, assuming you have access to given SQL Server and Kentico DB. Instead of updating password value in the UserPassword column, it is better to clear the password and then setup a new password from UI. Updating the password may work for Plain text passwords only, but when the system uses encrypted passwords (SHA1, SHA2 or SHA2 with salt format), this won’t work.

Additionally, please make sure that:

1. You updated the correct database. You can find the database name in the web site’s web.config file.
2. You saved the changes in the database.
3. The user is marked as global admin (UserIsGlobalAdmin = true) or
4. The user is marked as CMS editor (UserIsEditor = true) and
5. The user is enabled (UserEnabled = true)
6. The site uses Form authentication.

Under certain circumstances it may help to restart the application.

Optionally, you can use the CMSAdminEmergencyReset or the CMSShowForgottenPassLink key in your web.config file. You can hide/show the button by adding the following key to the /configuration/appSettings section of your web.config file:

<add key="CMSShowForgottenPassLink" value="[false/true]" />

Reseting the password via a web.config key can be done by inserting the following key to the appSettings section of your web.config:
 
<add key="CMSAdminEmergencyReset" value="<your username>;<your new password>;[true/false]" />

The first and second parameter specify your user name and your new password, delimited by a semicolon. The third parameter is optional and indicates whether you want to create a new user with global administrator rights.
 
The key will be automatically deleted after you gain access to the user interface.
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See also: Password Recovery

Applies to: Kentico CMS 7.x
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