Password reset either not being sent or not received

ZC had annulled my password as I gather the 90 days is up that someone has set that we must remember to reset a different password. I cannot remember it so requested a reset. I was advised an email would be sent to me. Nothing has come even tho I've requested the reset over and over now. Is it possible there's some outgoing mail issue with ZC? I have checked my junk folder, my deleted folder and gone online to my server to see if anything is sitting there. Nothing has been received anywhere. Can someone tell me how to contact the administrator or whoever is in charge of email issues? Thank you in advance for any advice and help.

If your server isn't properly sending emails, you'll need to reset the password manually by hacking the database, as described in the FAQ article here: http://www.zen-cart.com/content.php?44-how-do-i-change-or-reset-my-admin-password-%28i-lost-it%29

Thank you Dr. Byte. My server is not receiving any message from ZC to send on to me. I am receiving other emails thru the server just fine. I just sent myself messages from another email program, thru to my server and they both arrived in my Inbox. It would appear that the password reset message for my store admin is not being sent out in the first place. I don't pretend to know what is going on, but I'm not receiving the message and they are not on the server, in my junk folder or anywhere else on my system or the server. I appreciate your help. Thanks again.

DrByte:

If your server isn't properly sending emails, you'll need to reset the password manually by hacking the database, as described in the FAQ article here: http://www.zen-cart.com/content.php?44-how-do-i-change-or-reset-my-admin-password-%28i-lost-it%29

Hello Dr. Byte. To make matters more complicated, for me anyway, my store/website is now "Down for Maintenance" with a red message banner across the top of the page saying "Your database appears to need patching to a higher level. See Admin->Tools->Server Information to review patch levels." Since I cannot access Admin/Tools/Server Information until I can get the password reset, not sure what to do now. Actually, I'm not sure what to do even if I could access the Admin page but I hope there's information there to tell me how to fix this problem, if and when I can access it. Thanks for any insights as to what to do here.
George

"down for maintenance" appears whenever your store has been set in "down for maintenance" mode.

This can happen in two cases:
a) You, the store administrator, enabled that switch
b) You attempted a database upgrade ... and that always enables that switch as the first thing it does, so that customers must stop shopping so errors don't happen if they're placing an order. After you're done the upgrade, you can turn that switch off from your admin panel.

Further, the "Your database appears to need patching..." message only appears when you've got newer PHP files on your server compared to the database you've told it to access.
(ie: your configure.php files are pointing to an older database than what your Zen Cart files contain.)

So .... this tells me that one or more things are going on:
a) you (or someone with access to your webserver, including your hosting company) are mucking with database backups/restores
b) (hopefully not, but this is a possibility) you've been hacked and someone has altered critical files or database content
c) you've been changing your configure.php file contents while trying to fix problems that don't really need you to do that

Your last post really makes it sound like you just set your configure.php file to point to an old database you were using before upgrading. Or you restored a backup from when you were doing an upgrade.

NONE of these should be happening if you've actually been using your site "for 90 days and triggered the password expiry" as you implied in your first post.

And NONE of these symptoms should be happening at all if you were simply following the FAQ article I posted above about how to manually reset your password without using email. Not sure why you'd be touching configure.php files or messing with database backups/restores...

Thanks for your insight Dr. Byte. I have not done anything on my site recently except make a backup of the folder on the server last night. I hadn't even gotten the database backup done, the one that requires me to go to the myPHP section at my hosting companies site. My online store has been working with no issues for some time since it was updated to 1.5 several months ago by a qualified ZC programmer. If she were available, I would be contacting her to ask what do do, but she is incommunicado at this time.

I didn't set my site to be 'Down for Maintenance', didn't initiate any upgrade or anything besides make a FTP backup of the images etc. last night. As I say, I hadn't gotten to the other backup yet so if it's corrupted now, I'm not sure what to do, unless my previous database backup can be used with the newer backup I did last night of the images. I haven't reset configure.php file to point to an old database.

The only thing I did to try to reset my password was fill in the boxes with what I thought were my current user name & password. When they wouldn't work four times, I realized that probably the 90 days were up, so filled in the other boxes to have the password reset. Since then, all I did was filled in the 'Reset Password) boxes several more times to have the ZC site send me an email link to reset my password (since nothing was coming thru to me) so I could access my Admin to do deactivate some products on my site. As you can see, all your emails are coming thru to me, but the password reset for my Admin never has.

I didn't follow the FAQ to reset the password because to me, it may as well be written in 1st century Greek. I had no clue what you were indicating with all the brackets with admin this and admin that. I didn't know what to fill in or replace what was there with whatever you were indicating. Don't know what else to tell you. I only go on and off the Admin site to add or deactivate products, not upgrade anything or play with it. I don't pretend to know what I'm doing so stay away from anything but the simple things I've learned to do.

actionjackson57:

I realized that probably the 90 days were up
The password isn't "deleted" after 90 days.
Please don't take this statement the wrong way: I'm not sure why so many people assume that "expired password" means the password is suddenly completely lost and access is completely denied.

Here's how the "90days expiry" works:

1. The correct old password will still work. You USE the old password to log in, as usual ... and, things look normal up until that point ... especially since most people won't know that "oops, today is 90 days", and frankly that's irrelevant ... read on:
2. The system recognizes that the 90 days is up, and ASKS YOU TO ENTER A NEW PASSWORD. (Same way you would "change your current password" if you wanted to change it.)

It never flat-out denies you access just because 90 days has gone by. Even if 490 days had gone by it would still let you log in using your last-used password, and would immediately ask you to supply a new password.

The only reason to be denied access to the old password is if another administrator were to delete your user account or change the password on you ... and normally if someone changes the password on you it would trigger an email to tell you it had happened. So, if you're the only admin account on your store, then chances are these last points aren't the issue.

Further ... you said you asked it to email you a new password.
Here's how THAT works:

1. You ask for a new password.
2. It generates a new random temporary password which it emails to the address associated with your admin user profile.
3. You can then either log in with your REAL password OR the temporary password from the email.
4. If you use the REAL password, the temporary one is invalidated because it's not needed anymore.
5. If you fail to use the temporary password within 24 hours it will invalidate itself ... this is to protect you in case someone gains access to old emails.
6. If you send yourself multiple temporary passwords, only the last one is valid, since all the prior temporary passwords would be replaced with the latest one.
7. When you do use the temporary password, it will immediately ask you to select a new password (the same as for the expired password scenario described at the top of this post). And then that temporary password is deactivated, since you've selected a new one.

I'm sure it would all have been much easier for you if the email delivery was working properly. But, since only you and your programmer have access to your webserver, only you and he/she can fix that problem, perhaps with the assistance of your hosting company.
In the meantime, if you still need to completely wipe out the old password from your admin and put a new one in, use the instructions in the FAQ article I mentioned. If those instructions are too complicated for your comfort zone, then I might suggest you ask your hosting company for assistance in running that SQL statement in phpMyAdmin.

Thank you again Dr. Byte. I was not able to gain access to my site at all, receiving instead a pink message below the password box, telling me that I'd entered the wrong password. I checked that I had the correct password, which I use regularly, but double checked anyway. I re-entered it and kept getting the same pink 'error' message. I then submitted the request to reset my password. I have had to receive that reset in the past on this site and others and I'm used to receiving the randomly generated alpha numeric temporary password. After gaining access in the past, I have attempted to reuse the same password again but received a message telling me I cannot use that password again for some period of time. I didn't remember or know the old password would work, but I was receiving the pink error message so I guess that means there was a problem other than the password needing to be reset. It just came up at the same time coincidentally I guess. Perhaps something happened when I did the backup but I wasn't doing anything different than normal, and didn't access the hosting provider to backup there. My previous programmer is not available for some reason so I am out of business until I find someone but still know how to change the password to access the Admin. I will contact tech support at the hosting company to see if they can help me in some way. I really appreciate all you've done here to help me and to explain the workings of various aspects of the site. Thank you again.

I had a similar problem today (v1.5):

• My last successful login was about 1 week ago. No edits made since then.
• Today, trying to login to my #1 admin account (superuser) failed.
• Requesting a password reset did not send the temp password to the #1 admin email. (The admin email address works fine, and the system sent an email to a second shop manager account doing a "Forgot Password" reset without problems.)
• After logging in with my #2 admin account I reset the #1 admin password from within the Admin module, logged out, and tried logging in as #1 admin again using the brand new password: failed again!
• Solution: I had to completely delete the #1 admin account and set up a new one.

To me it appears that the "Forgot Password" process is somehow breaking my admin account.

jtinla:

I had a similar problem today (v1.5):

• My last successful login was about 1 week ago. No edits made since then.
• Today, trying to login to my #1 admin account (superuser) failed.
• Requesting a password reset did not send the temp password to the #1 admin email. (The admin email address works fine, and the system sent an email to a second shop manager account doing a "Forgot Password" reset without problems.)
• After logging in with my #2 admin account I reset the #1 admin password from within the Admin module, logged out, and tried logging in as #1 admin again using the brand new password: failed again!
• Solution: I had to completely delete the #1 admin account and set up a new one.
  Had the SAME/SIMILAR experience this weekend in one client's store.. Had to create a new admin account using the process DrByte posted for adding in an admin user. (http://www.zen-cart.com/content.php?44-how-do-i-change-or-reset-my-admin-password-%28i-lost-it) I logged in with that user, deleted my account and then recreated it.. Now everything is fine..