Reset WebUI Password on Windows Rackmount

This applies to the Encoders and Decoders running on the Windows platform, which are too numerous to list, but usually have a model number between 5100 and 10000.

Resetting Accounts.xml

Resetting the Web GUI password for Windows Rackmounts is a pretty simple process. This file:

c:\Apache\htdocs\data\accounts.xml

...contains all the webUI users, usernames, and their hashed passwords.

Sometimes the Apache folder has a slightly different name, like Apache2.2, and sometimes there's multiple Apache folders, in which case check for the newest file based on creation date.

There are a 2 ways to reset the password(s):
1. Replace the existing accounts.xml. At the end of this article is a printout of the default file. Copy the content to a text editor such as Notepad.exe and save it as accounts.xml.

That will replace all previous accounts with two default accounts: administrator/demo and guest/demo

2. Go into the existing accounts.xml file using notepad, and locate an administrator account, like this default, for example:

<user name="Administrator" username="administrator" pass="fe01ce2a7fbac8fafaed7c982a04e229" type="admin" lastaccess="n/a" lastaccessip="" sessionip="127.0.0.1"/>

So, look for type="admin" and when you find one, first note the username (not "user name," which is the friendly name but "username," which is the user credential) go to the pass field and replace it with pass="fe01ce2a7fbac8fafaed7c982a04e229" which will reset that password from whatever it is to "demo"
Then save the file and try logging in with the username and demo as the password. If that doesn't work, reboot the machine and try logging in again.

Manually Edit Accounts.xml

If you want to create your users manually in this file, do the following procedure:

Copy the Administrator user text (the example above, and also found inside the accounts.xml attached) into your accounts.xml but edit the "user name" and "username" to create a new user. "user name" is the friendly name, like "Anita Chan" and "username" is the login: such as "achan1234"

If you want to set the password while in the file, you can generate an MD5 hash and paste that into the accounts.xml instead. Search for an MD5 Hash Generator or use this popular one:
https://www.md5hashgenerator.com

NOTE: Be sure there are no extra spaces, line-returns, etc. in the field when generating the MD5 Hash.

Copy the MD5 Hash result into the quotes after the pass= in the section of the xml that corresponds to your user.

Create additional users as necessary

Each additional user gets their own section in angle brackets < > which contain the following variables: user name, username, pass, type. Valid types include admin, operator, and guest. The lastaccess, lastaccessip, and sessionip fields will be filled in later by the encoder/decoder as the account is accessed.

Be sure to never delete all admin accounts!

Example Accounts.xml

Below is the default version of the accounts.xml file found in Windows Rackmount Streambox units:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<accounts>

<user name="Administrator" username="administrator" pass="fe01ce2a7fbac8fafaed7c982a04e229" type="admin" lastaccess="n/a" lastaccessip="" sessionip="127.0.0.1"/>

<user name="Guest" username="guest" pass="fe01ce2a7fbac8fafaed7c982a04e229" type="guest" lastaccess="n/a" lastaccessip=""/>

</accounts>