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Broken Admin Account - Local Vault

Former Member
Former Member
Good Afternoon,

During some testing the other day an admin account created on a local vault, intended for testing purposes, was downgraded from Admin to a regular user.  This account was the only one configured for Administration, the rest of the accounts are defaults from the basic Sample vault.  When setting up the vaults the server allowed a non admin user to set administration rights to the account initially so it was believed that the same would be true when those rights were removed and no other admins were listed under the vault.  This has proved to not be the case as an error message occurs when any changes are attempted such as importing another login account or creating a new account.

Since this is a local server no backups exist, however we don't want to lose our modifications completed to date.  Please advise if there is anyway to recover the administrative rights to this vault / account.

Thanks
  • Are you connected to the local server as a Windows) user that has administrative rights?

    If you need further help, and you have an active support and maintenance agreement, then I would probably say that - if you have truly locked yourself out - it may be worth getting your reseller (or M-Files directly) to help you. As a fall-back, you should be able to detach your vaults and re-mount them. That'll change the internal vault GUIDs, though, so it should be a last-resort.

    As an aside, and I am aware that it doesn't exactly help you right now, you really need to get backups sorted. This document is quite useful:
    kb.cloudvault.m-files.com/Default.aspx

    Craig.
  • Former Member
    Former Member
    Yes this is through Windows authentication, not M-Files, and no the account does not have administrative rights, hence this trouble. Unfortunately now zero accounts have admin rights on this local, and since none of them have rights I cannot import another account or create a replacement.

    Since no accounts have admin rights the vaults cannot be destroyed, restored, detached, attached, taken offline, backed up or otherwise affected from the admin panel. From what I can tell I have two options, one is to manually delete the vault files from the server folder on this PC, two uninstall M-Files and start over, however I am assuming this will not remove the vaults files themselves.

    Certainly an interesting outcome, allowing the removal of the only admin level user on the local 'server', it is rather humorous for us on this end. Lesson learned, always setup a spare admin account on the server to allow access for any unexpected eventualities.
  • Sorry, I don't think I was clear.

    When you run the M-Files Admin software on the server itself, how are you authenticated to the server? Not M-Files, the actual computer itself. What are you actually logging into the PC with?

    If you're connecting using a user who is a member of the local administrators group then you should be able to re-assign a login account as an (M-Files) server administrator.

    Craig.
  • Former Member
    Former Member
    Ah yes, now I see what you mean. We have this all figured out now. Thanks.