Recover password of IIS application pool identity

Recently I come across a very difficult situation… in a production deployment, I realize I need to key in a password I don’t even have! My ex-teammates and all existing documents did not have it. The account is not setup in UAT or DEV environment so I have no idea the account exist until the deployment day.

After a hour of old document searching, I am almost give up. Until I suddenly find this blog article ( How to Recover Passwords for SharePoint Managed Accounts — by Roger Cormier).

In short, if you are the administrator of server, you can use “appcmd.exe” to show you application pool’s identity’s password. Roger’s blog have covered various usage and preparation. Here I only quote the command here:

cmd.exe /c C:\windows\system32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe list apppool “Name of Application Pool” /text:ProcessModel.Password

Remember, you need to open a DOS prompt with administration right first. Otherwise, you will either get an error or an encrypted string.

Originally published at http://createsitecollection.wordpress.com on April 2, 2018.