how to start oracle instance. forgot uname pwd

Question

this one isn't a dev question but silly tech quesiton...

I had installed oracle 10g on my local windows box. When I open the Database Control window in IE it shows that listener is up but instance is down. I try to start it from there but it says wrong uname pwd. How can I start the instance or find my uname and pwd?

Error:

ERROR:
ORA-01034: ORACLE not available
ORA-27101: shared memory realm does not exist

Answer 1

Log in as a member of the ORA_DBA group, open a command window, set your ORACLE_SID to the name of your instance, and enter:

sqlplus / as sysdba
startup

At that point, change the password for the user you've forgotten the PW for.