How to Enable sa Account in SQL Server [ 2 Steps]

In this article, We are going to perform How to Enable sa Account in SQL Server and SQL Express.

Introduction

If you have installed Microsoft SQL Server using Windows Authentication mode. By default ‘sa‘ account is disabled . you have to first change SQL Authentication mode then to have to enable ‘sa‘ logins.

How to Enable sa Account in SQL Server

Below are steps to enable Change SQL Authentication and enable sa logins in SQL Server.

Step 1: Login to MS SQL Server , right click on it and click on Properties.

Step 2: Click on Security ,click SQL Server and Windows Authentication mode option as show below and click on ok.

Step 3: once you clicked Ok button, you will get below message to restart MS SQL Server.

Restart the MS SQL SQL Server to take effect and enable Windows and SQL Authentication mode.

Step 4: once again login to MS SQL server , click on Logins and goto ‘sa‘ user.

Step 5: Right click on ‘sa‘ user and click on Properties as shown below.

Step 6: In General section , change the password and confirm password and you can uncheck Enforce password policy if you don’t want and click on Ok.

Step 7: Navigate to Status page , In Login settings click on Enabled to enable sa login and click on Ok.

Step 8: Press the Windows+R, type ‘services.msc‘ and restart the SQL Server as shown below.

Now you can login to SQL Server using SQL Authentication mode , ‘sa’ user and password.

You can Enable ‘sa’using below SQL Script.

ALTER LOGIN sa ENABLE ;
GO
ALTER LOGIN sa WITH PASSWORD = 'FossTechnix@123';
GO

Conclusion:

In this article , We have covered How to Enable sa Account in SQL Server , Enabling SQL Authentication mode and restart the MS SQL Server.

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Reference:

Microsoft SQL Server official page