What do you do when no one has sysadmin rights?

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mbgrood - 26 Apr 2006 21:35 GMT

We have an installation of SQL Server 2005 that allows windows
authentication only. None of our windows users have been explicitly
granted sysadmin rights, but my understanding was that if you are a
member of the windows administrator group you will automatically have
sysadmin rights to sql server. This does not appear to be the case.
Is there a way to get our sysadmin rights back or will we have to do a
re-installation?

Thanks!

Michelle

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David Browne - 26 Apr 2006 23:06 GMT

> We have an installation of SQL Server 2005 that allows windows
> authentication only. None of our windows users have been explicitly
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> Is there a way to get our sysadmin rights back or will we have to do a
> re-installation?

Restart the instance in single user mode (which only a local admin can do).

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms180965.aspx

Then log in as a local admin and you will magically be a sysadmin.

Re-add builtin\administrators login and give it the sysadmin server role and
restart the server in normal mode.

David

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Mike Hodgson - 27 Apr 2006 00:30 GMT

Really? So the login behaviour changes in single-user mode (even if the
BUILTIN\Administrators login has previously been dropped)? I didn't
know that. I'll have to try it out. Thanks for the info. (I wonder if
there's something you can do with DAC to get around that "no sysadmin"
issue.)

--
*mike hodgson*
http://sqlnerd.blogspot.com

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