Administration-Related Issues For additional details, see Section 4.9, “Environment Variables” . If you have never assigned a  root  password for MySQL, the server does not require a password at all for connecting as  root . However, this is insecure. For instructions on assigning a password, see Section 2.10.4, “Securing the Initial MySQL Account” . If you know the  root  password and want to change it, see Section 13.7.1.1, “ALTER USER Statement” , and Section 13.7.1.10, “SET PASSWORD Statement” . If you assigned a  root  password previously but have forgotten it, you can assign a new password. The following sections provide instructions for Windows and Unix and Unix-like systems, as well as generic instructions that apply to any system. On Windows, use the following procedure to reset the password for the MySQL  ’root’@’localhost’ account. To change the password for a  root  account with a different host name part, modify the instructions to use that host name. If your server is not running as a service, you may need to use the Task Manager to force it to stop. If you installed MySQL to a different location, adjust the  cd  command accordingly. The server executes the contents of the file named by the  init_file  system variable at startup, changing the  ’root’@’localhost’  account password. To have server output to appear in the console window rather than in a log file, add the  --console option to the  mysqld  command. If you installed MySQL using the MySQL Installation Wizard, you may need to specify a  --defaults- file  option. For example: 5299 C:\>  mysqld --defaults-file="C:\\ProgramData\\MySQL\\MySQL Server 8.0\\my.ini" C:\>  cd "C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 8.0\bin" C:\>  mysqld --init-file=C:\\mysql-init.txt ALTER USER ’root’@’localhost’ IDENTIFIED BY ’MyNewPass’; B.3.3.2 How to Reset the Root Password Resetting the Root Password: Windows Systems 6. Start the MySQL server with the  init_file  system variable set to name the file (notice that the backslash in the option value is doubled): 5. Open a console window to get to the command prompt: From the  Start  menu, select  Run , then enter cmd  as the command to be run. 3. Create a text file containing the password-assignment statement on a single line. Replace the password with the password that you want to use. 4. Save the file. This example assumes that you name the file  C:\mysql-init.txt . 2. Stop the MySQL server if it is running. For a server that is running as a Windows service, go to the Services manager: From the  Start  menu, select  Control Panel , then  Administrative Tools , then Services . Find the MySQL service in the list and stop it. 1. Log on to your system as Administrator.