This tutorial is a guide to resetting your Joomla (versions 1.5, 2.5, and 3.5) administrative account password through the database manager phpMyAdmin.
However, the simplest way to reset your password is by using the lost password feature; the site will send an email to the user's email address which will allow you to change the password.
But there are a few reasons why you would need to do this through the database, firstly you may not have access to the email for the admin account (for whatsoever reason) or you're using a Joomla version beyond 1.5 where the lost password feature has been removed.
Changing the Password in the Database
To change the password in the database to a known value you require access to your MySQL database by using phpMyAdmin.
You can access your database through this application by browsing the database heading on your control panel.
Go to phpMyAdmin and select the Joomla database your website is using from the list on the left.
This will show all the database tables.
Click on the table jos_users (your database tables may differ and if this is the case you’ll need to browse through all the _users table until you find the one with the admin account), this will display all the admin users for the website.
Find the admin user whose password you want to change and press the Edit icon for this row.
A form will display that allows you to edit the password field.
Copy and paste the following password into the field and press the Go button.
d2064d358136996bd22421584a7cb33e:trd7TvKHx6dMeoMmBVxYmg0vuXEA4199
This may look strange but the password is masked or salted using a one-way encryption method and the password above before the inscription is the word secret.
After the password has been saved, you will now be able to log in with this user and password and change the password to a more secure one.
NOTE: It’s very important that you change the password once you have access to your account because the password used with this tutorial is public knowledge and might be a security vulnerability left unchanged.