Many times my customers are asking for possibility to recover VSS Admin password, most of the time they have old VSS server nobody touch it for quite some time and now they want to search for some code but nobody can remember Admin password.
Recover the password is required a new user file and rights file needs to be created. Doing this removes all users except GUEST and ADMIN, which are reset to SourceSafe defaults.
All other users must be recreated. In addition, all rights will be lost and therefore will have to be recreated.
Before you start to recover make sure to copy USERS.TXT file that contain a list of current users, you will need it when you create users after recovery
Let’s start the VSS recovery
Method 1:
Create a temporary directory, such as C:\VSSTEMP
Use the Admin tool to create a new database in the temporary folder (C:\VSSTEMP)
After the database created successfully, the folder will looks like
Run DDCONV from VSS installation folder, it is installed when you installed the VSS.
(For example: DDCONV C:\VSSTEMP\Data)
Copy UM.DAT, RIGHTS.DAT and STATUS.DAT file from the temporary directory replace the SourceSafe data directory. (Rename the original files)
Use Admin tool to add user,
Method 2:
This recovery method will keep current users and privileges
Create a local user “Admin” with Administrator privilege on vss host and then Logon with “Admin” account
Run Admin tool …cheers
Method 3:
Reset VSS Admin password, Simply download the attach file and run in the Data directory of your VSS 6.0 project (where the file um.dat is located) using a command prompt, then rename the files as instructed and your admin password will become blank.
Note: download the file and then modify extension from .doc to .zip
IT mug 