Cannot login to Oracle11g with System username

Question

I just installed Oracle 11g into my machine. I was about to shut down a database instance, and Oracle asked me for username and password, I provided the credentials I used to login into the web system, and it said that the credentials were wrong.

I googled how to change credentials, so I logged in into SQL Plus and did the following:

 ALTER USER sys IDENTIFIED BY "my_new_password";

then I tried to shut down the database instance logging in with the user sys and the new password and oracle still complaint about wrong credentials. Then I logged off, and when I tried to log in with my username and password they didn't work. I tried to login with sys and the new password and it didn't work, and now I completely out of the database management web site, and I can't do anything.

I do not know where to go from here, I'm working in a Windows 7 Machine.

• Aaron: Are you trying to login as "sys" or "system"? They are different. Here's a posting that explains the difference between the two: dba.stackexchange.com/questions/405/…
• user8642: your sys password is case sensitive as you mentioned in " ". Use my_new_password in lower case letters.
• Justin Cave: Are you talking about shutting down Oracle via Enterprise Manager (the web-based GUI)? Or via a command-line? Enterprise Manager will request operating system credentials (on Windows, a Windows username & password that is in the ORA_DBA group) in order to start and stop certain services. A command-line tool will not (since, after all, you're using your operating system privileges inherently in that environment).

Answer 1

I had the same issue, checked ORA_DBA group and it was OK, reconnected through command line using SYS account -> worked, then reconnected to webapp -> worked!

Answer 2

You mentioned you were on a Windows machine and a brand new DB. A problem I've run into is the ORA_DBA group. Windows has a habit of not allowing you to log into an Oracle DB with high level credentials if your OS account is not in the ORA_DBA group. We found this problem when we migrated to Windows 2008. I have no experience with Windows 7, but feel like its a safe assumption that it has a security setup similar to 2008, and this may be your problem.