How to Reset the Kerio MailServer Admin Password

Someone once asked me for help: the administrator password of Kerio MailServer had been lost.

How to reset the Kerio MailServer administrator password on Windows

1. Stop the Kerio MailServer service (Control Panel → Administrative Tools → Computer Management → Services and Applications → Services → Kerio MailServer).

2. Find the file users.cfg. With the default installation it is in C:\Program Files\Kerio\Mailserver.

3. users.cfg is an ordinary text file; open it in a text editor.

4. Find the admin user’s block. It looks something like this:

<variable name="Name">admin</variable>
...
<variable name="Password">a string of digits and letters</variable>

5. Replace the string of digits and letters with NUL: (without quotes). This clears the password. The line should look like this:

<variable name="Password">NUL:</variable>

6. Save users.cfg, start the service and connect from Kerio MailServer Engine as the administrator, with an empty password.

7. As soon as you are in, set a new password for the admin account immediately.

This was written for the old Kerio MailServer versions. Make a copy of users.cfg before editing it.