Problem: Forgot the SharePoint 2010 Passphrase

Problem

You forgot or misplaced the passphrase for your SharePoint 2010 farm.  The passphrase is needed when connecting to a farm in order to run the configuration wizard.  Additionally, managed account credentials are encyrpted based upon the passphrase.

You cannot recover the passphrase but you can configure a new one.  The following procedure shows you how.

Solution

1) On the SharePoint 2010 Server, open the SharePoint 2010 Management Shell as an administrator.

2) Enter the following, and then press Enter: $passphrase = ConvertTo-SecureString -asPlainText -Force

3) Enter your desired passphrase, and then press Enter.

4) Enter the following script, and then press Enter: Set-SPPassPhrase -PassPhrase $passphrase -Confirm

5) You'll be prompted to confirm the passphrase.

6) Enter the passphrase again

7) Press Enter.  You'll be prompted to confirm that you want to reset the passphrase.

8) Just press Enter once again.

9) Once the shell prompt returns, you've successfully reset the passphrase.

References

• Account permissions and security settings (SharePoint Server 2010)
• Updating passwords on SharePoint 2010
• Reset the Farm Passphrase in SharePoint 2010