Friday, March 26, 2010

Break Back Into Locked Out Sql Instance

This is how to get ‘back into’ a SQL instance when the local administrators group have been ‘locked out’ by not being SYSADMIN on the sql instance (and the SA password has been lost / other admin accounts are unknown / inaccessible)

On more than one occasion people who should know better have flat-out told me that this can’t be done, so just while I have the link handy:

…if SQL Server 2005 is started in single-user mode, any user who has membership in the BUILTIN\Administrators group can connect to SQL Server 2005 as a SQL Server administrator. The user can connect regardless of whether the BUILTIN\Administrators group has been granted a server login that is provisioned in the SYSADMIN fixed server role. This behavior is by design. This behavior is intended to be used for data recovery scenarios.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;932881&sd=rss&spid=2855

This is also true for Sql 2008. See Starting SQL Server In Single-User Mode

1 comment:

piers7 said...

...and SQL 2012

Popular Posts