How to Reset Joomla Administrator Password

Finding the Password

Log in to your Joomla database (via phpMyAdmin for example)
Click to edit the _users database (will be preceded by your account name, for example: example_users)
Edit the entry for where usertype = "Super Administrator" (should be the first record)
Resetting the Password
In the password field you'll notice a string of characters. Joomla uses a one-way encoding method, which means you won't be able to retrieve your old password. However, you will be able to reset the password to a new one using mySQL's built in MD5 function:

UPDATE example_users SET password=MD5('new password') WHERE usertype = "Super Administrator";

Voila - you just successfully reset your Joomla password Go to your joomla domain at example.com/administrator and try logging in with the new password. You should be logged in as Super Administrator.

Troubleshooting
If for some reason the above method does not work try encoding a password that contains only alphanumeric (a-z, 0-9) characters. This method may not work if your password contains special characters (@!#$).

How to reset Joomla 1.5, 1.0 and earlier passwords
In each of these examples you'll want to follow the above instructions, but then modify your SQL query to the following, which will reset your password to the one you specify.

UPDATE `jos_users` SET `password` = MD5( 'new password' ) WHERE `jos_users`.`username` = "admin";

If this doesn't work, try changing jos_users to mos_users.

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