Unable to connect to SQL Database (can the password be reset)

Question

I have recently joined a company which has an SQL 2005 Server running a few databases.

The server looks like no one has touched it in a couple of years and has this week it ran out of disk space.

After a quick hard drive scan it looks like some of the databases have become a little bloated and particularly the Sharepoint_config~*~_log and WSS_Content_log.ldf have grown to about 15GB.

I have been able to log into a couple of the other databases and use the shrinkfile command to free up disk space but for some reason I am unable to log into the sharepoint and Microsoft#SSEE databases (which gives me the "cannot connect to Sharepoint, a network related or instance specific error occurred..." when I try and connect)

I can see that the database is running via the SQL surface configuration and I have made sure that the remote connection settings allow me to connect locally but I am still unable to log in either with windows authentication or locally.

Is there any way to reset or recover the database login details so I can get in?

( I have tried logging in with all the administrative passwords I can find and after tracking down the company who installed it in the first place I found out that they have no idea what the password could have been)

Answer 1

You could try the Dedicated Admin Connection (sqlcmd -E -S [ServerName] -A) logged directly into the machine from a cmd window in a system account. Reset the sa password to something else and then log in normally as sa.

Answer 2

Woo finally got there in the end. Tried a dedicated admin connection but It still did not understand where the database was (even though it gave me the database name in the drop down menu),

after a bit of fiddling managed to pipe directly to the database and squashed the bloated beast right down,

directory path was something like this: \.\pipe\mssql$microsoft##ssee\sql\query

from here I was able to log in with the standard admin password for that server.