“Alter user sys identified by” not working

First of all, I use:

Windows 7 x64 Oracle Enterprise 11g R2 x32

I have some basic experience with SQL Server and MySQL (more with MySQL). Today I started working with Oracle, and I’ve been bumping a lot on the way.

The problem I’m having now is that, for some reason, I can’t connect to any sys user (sysdba or sysoper). Probably I made a mistake writing the password when creating the database, but I’m not sure, so I’m trying to change it.

I’ve been trying, as some searches had led me to try, to use

sqlplus /nolog
connect / as sysdba
alter user sys identified by new_pass;

And it seems to work. I mean, it says “User altered”. However, I still can’t log in sqlplus with the new password. It’s a little weird, since I can connect to “sysman” with my original password, but it doesn’t have the privileges I need.

I’d appreciate any help I could get, and I thank you beforehand.

Answer

After you log in with ‘sqlplus / as sysdba’, try changing the password for system by issuing

ALTER USER system IDENTIFIED BY abcdef;

Then, to make sure, without quitting sqlplus:

CONN system/abcdef

That should work. After that, you can log on with system/abcdef when you start sqlplus.