How to reset MikroTik RouterBOARD admin password without resetting the configuration

Forgot the MikroTik RouterBOARD password? No problem, lets try to reset the admin password WITHOUT resetting the all configuration.

This trick works only with RouterBOARDs produced before mid 2018 (with factory RouterOS 6.42.12 and older)

Tip: try this trick on a test device before resetting in real

RouterOS versions 6.42.x and below had weak winbox authentication with insecure plain-text internal storage. This legacy storage was replaced by modern secure storage starting from version 6.43. RouterOS versions 6.43 and 6.44 had a transitional dual credentials storage. The system admin password was stored in legacy and modern storage together. After upgrading to version 6.45 and newer the legacy storage was wiped and removed from the system. The legacy storage admin password is reset to empty after 6.45 installation. We can use netinstall tool to replace RouterOS 6.45+ with RouterOS 6.42 to ignore the modern storage and use legacy. As soon as our legacy storage has empty admin password – we can access the system.

Let’s go step-by-step to make it!