Reset and recover a dedicated server password

Last update: October 05 2026Open in Markdown

You can view the password for the root user in the Control Panel: in the top menu, click Products → Dedicated Servers → Servers → server page → Operating System tab. The password is available for viewing for 24 hours from the start of the OS installation, reinstallation, or configuration change.

If you forgot or lost your password, you can recover it using recovery and diagnostic modes:

• for servers with Linux and Windows OS — recover server password in Rescue;
• for servers with Windows OS — recover server password in WinPE.

For servers with macOS, the password cannot be recovered. To continue using the server, create a ticket.

Restore the server password in Rescue

Ubuntu and Debian

1. Boot the server in the Rescue recovery and diagnostic mode.

2. Connect to the server in Rescue mode via the KVM console or using the SSH protocol.

3. Mount the OS file system.

4. Change the password for the root user:

   passwd root

5. Enter the new password twice. The password will not be displayed in the command line.

6. Wait for the confirmation that the password has been changed:

   passwd: password updated successfully

7. If the mount was performed manually using the mount command, sync the data:

   sync

8. Exit the environment:

   exit

9. If the mount was performed manually using the mount command, unmount the file system:

   umount /dev/<partition> /mnt

   Specify <partition> — the disk partition where you mounted the file system in step 3.

10. Restore the previous server boot template or reboot the server from the OS. When rebooting the server from the OS, the boot template will automatically change back to the one set before changing the server boot template.

CentOS

1. Boot the server in the Rescue recovery and diagnostic mode.

2. Connect to the server in Rescue mode via the KVM console or using the SSH protocol.

3. Mount the OS file system.

4. Change the password for the root user:

   passwd root

5. Enter the new password twice. The password will not be displayed in the command line.

6. Update the password checksums:

   touch /.autorelabel

7. If the mount was performed manually using the mount command, sync the data:

   sync

8. Exit the environment. The partition will be unmounted automatically:

   exit

9. Restore the previous server boot template or reboot the server from the OS. When rebooting the server from the OS, the boot template will automatically change back to the one set before changing the server boot template.

Windows

1. Boot the server in the Rescue recovery and diagnostic mode.

2. Connect to the server in Rescue mode via the KVM console or using the SSH protocol.

3. Display information about the partitions on the available disks:

   lsblk

   A list of disks and their partitions will appear in the response. For example:

   NAME    MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
   sda       8:0    0   2.9G  0 disk
   └─sda1    8:1    0   2.9G  0 part
   sdb       8:16   0   160G  0 disk
   ├─sdb1    8:17   0 159.9G  0 part
   ├─sdb14   8:30   0     4M  0 part
   └─sdb15   8:31   0   106M  0 part

   Here, sda1, sdb1, sdb14, sdb15 are disk partitions. In your OS, partition names may differ.

4. Select the system partition, which is usually the largest partition on the disk. In the step 2 example, this is partition sdb1.

5. Mount the OS disk partition to the /mnt directory:

   mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/<partition> /mnt

   Specify <partition> — the disk partition that you selected in step 4.

6. Switch to the Administrator user account editing mode:

   chntpw -u Administrator /mnt/Windows/System32/config/SAM

7. To reset the password, select Clear (blank) user password. The options may differ in different versions of the utility; in this example, it is option 1:

   1

8. Close the file:

   q

9. Confirm the changes:

   y

10. Restore the previous server boot template or reboot the server from the OS. When rebooting the server from the OS, the boot template will automatically change back to the one set before changing the server boot template.

11. Connect to the server. After resetting the password, you can make the first connection without it.

12. Set a new password on the server. To do this, go to Settings → Accounts → Sign-in Options.

13. In the Password section, click Add.

14. Enter a new password.

15. Click OK.

Restore the server password in WinPE

1. Boot the server in the WinPE recovery and diagnostic mode.

2. Connect to the server in WinPE mode via the KVM console or using the VNC protocol.

3. Launch the NTPWEdit password editing utility.

4. Make sure that the Path to SAM file field specifies the path to the SAM file — this is the Security Account Manager (SAM) file.

5. Click Open.

6. Select the account. If the account is locked, unlock it by clicking Unlock.

7. Click Change password.

8. Enter a new password. If you set an empty password, you will not be able to connect via RDP and change the password using the NTPWEdit utility.

9. Confirm the password.

10. Click OK.

11. Click Save changes.

12. Restore the previous server boot template or reboot the server from the OS. When rebooting the server from the OS, the boot template will automatically change back to the one set before changing the server boot template.