Root password Unknown

[bwilsey84]

We were using an automatic build software to that built an ESXi 5.5 host, the root password was unknown therefore it was pretty much useless. I tried to install ESXi 6.0.0 Update 2 and overwrite the datastore. However when given the option to overwrite it told me that the installer was just going to upgrade it. I gave it a shot to see if maybe it would overwrite but after it loaded it still had all the old settings (IP was the same, so was the root password). Id imagine theres no way to recover a root password. Is there a special version of the installer that will overwrite instead of just upgrade? Or did I miss a step when you have to overwrite the data. Its installed on an Dell r730xd, which i had to put into UEFI mode to even boot to the cd otherwise I would get a checksum error.

Thanks

[unsichtbare]

Try user: root

password:                            empty / no password

[admin]

Reinstalling the ESXi host is the only supported way to reset a password on ESXi. Any other method may lead to a host failure or an unsupported configuration due to the complex nature of the ESXi architecture. ESXi does not have a service console and as such traditional Linux methods of resetting a password, such as single-user mode.

VMware KB: Changing a forgotten root password on an ESX/ESXi host

[bwilsey84]

That was what I had tried, reinstalling by going from 5.5 to 6.0 but instead of wiping the configuration and overwriting all it did was upgrade. Same configs are still on the host.

[Finikiez]

There should be an option to do a fresh install when installer detects existing installation.

However you can replace root password by replacing encrypter password on well known password or empty password. It's easy, you just need to boot host from linux livecd

For example Reset VMware ESXi root password - Thomas-Krenn-Wiki