title: Recover System Password Oracle XE
body: <p>Recently when trying to refresh a soon to expire system password in Oracle XE I somehow locked the system account and can no longer login as "system".</p>
  
  <p>How can I reset or recover this password?</p>
  
  <p>Here is a console capture:</p>
  
  <pre><code>SQL*Plus: Release 11.2.0.2.0 Production on Wed May 10 12:32:40 2017
  Copyright (c) 1982, 2010, Oracle.  All rights reserved.
  Enter user-name: system
  Enter password:
  ERROR:
  ORA-28000: the account is locked
  Enter user-name:
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Note: I am not really a frequent user of Oracle.  I managed to google enough instructions to install and use Oracle XE enough to get by.</p>
  
  <p>Currently I have one database hosted that I could erase if necessary.  Even if I have to wipe out all user data for XE and start fresh, that would be good enough.</p>
  
  <p>Obviously I could try to uninstall and reinstall XE, but that seems like more work than would be necessary.</p>