How to Manually Disable Admin Tools in Joomla

How to Manually Disable the Admin Tools Plugin

One of our users was accidentally locked out of his Joomla administrator by Admin Tools. He had triggered a strict security feature in Admin Tools that denied him access, even though he was a super user.

The error he received was this:

You are a spammer, hacker or an otherwise bad person.

I'm going show you two methods to disable Admin Tools. This will allow you to login again in the admin area of Joomla, fix the issue, then reenable Admin Tools.

Method #1: Disable the plugin through phpMyAdmin

  • Access phpMyAdmin through cPanel:
Joomla, Disable the Admin Tools Plugin
  1. Choose the database
  2. Find "prefix_extensions" table (where prefix is the unique value of your database tables)
  3. Browse
  4. Filter rows with for plugin's name: "System - Admin Tools"
  5. Edit the record from the results area
Joomla, Disable the Admin Tools Plugin
Joomla, Disable the Admin Tools Plugin
  • Change the "enabled" value to 0
Joomla, Disable the Admin Tools Plugin
  • Save changes
Joomla, Disable the Admin Tools Plugin


Method #2: Rename plugin folder

By using an FTP client like FileZilla or through cPanel File manager:

  • Go to the plugins/system/admintools folder
  • Rename main.php file to main-disable.php

Now login in the administrator area to confirm the fix is indeed working.

Joomla, Disable the Admin Tools Plugin

Revert changes

Once you are logged into your site, make sure to fix the issue that prevented you from logging on. This fix is normally done via Components > Admin Tools > Web Application Firewall.

Once you have fixed the problem, you can revert the changes you made via Method #1 or Method #2.