Sometimes the Citrix licensing server doesn’t get accessed for a long time, maybe the admin leaves and is replaced and no-one made a note of the password. Suddenly, you can’t access the licensing server any more. What to do ?

If you have access to the disk sub system (ie.. the files) on the licensing server then it is possible to reset the admin password.

1. Open the “server.xml” file in C:Program FilesCitrixLicensingLSconf. If on Win2k8 you will need to open your editor as an admin. (Take a copy of the file first – if anything goes wrong you can simply copy the file back to restore the original settings).

2. Find the entry that looks something like this:

<user firstName=”System” id=”admin” lastName=”Administrator” password=”(ENC-01)LKJ338u98uxkllS(*U+ljljlja-$78923ghJgs” passwordExpired=”false” privileges=”admin”/>;

3. Erase the contents between the double quotes after “password=”

4. Enter a plain text password , for example password=”TemporaryPassword”

5. Change the passwordExpired value to be “true” and save the server.xml file.

6. Restart the licensing services or, at a push, reboot the server.

7. Log into the licensing console using user name “admin” and the password set above.

8. You will be prompted to change your password. The new password will be encrypted in the server.xml file.