Can not change expired password - Windows.

[kreeve]

The Windows login password on a computer shared by 2 wards has expired. You can go through the motions of changing the password however it asks for old password then new password. Once we do that it then gives an error that the username or password is wrong. We have tried everything including many tips from online.

Looking for ideas. There is no admin username and password on the machine. Only thing used on the computer is MLS.

Kevin

[russellhltn]

Assuming you're correctly using the old password, I'm wondering if it's rejecting your new password. Sometime machines are at up such that you can't reuse an old password.

[kreeve]

Tried several new passwords, and verified we were typing the old one correctly.

[russellhltn]

I'll look at our machine the next time I'm at church. But you might want to follow the following:

• Passwords may not contain the Account Name or parts of the Full Name value.
• It must contain characters from 3 of the following groups:
  • Upper case
  • Lower case
  • Numbers
  • Special character ~!@#$%^&*_-+=`|\(){}[]:;"'<>,.?/

I'm taking a wild guess that somehow the password "complexity requirement" got turned on. If that happened, any variation of the password which has been the standard for many years would no longer be permitted. And, you'd only find out about this change when you went to change the password as the policy is not enforced on existing passwords.

There is most certainly a length requirement, but that could be most any number. Typically the lower limit is 8. I've heard of as high as 14.

[drepouille]

When all else fails, you may have to resort to the well-known Windows Sticky Keys Hack. It is rather complex, but I've done it several times when friends have forgotten their Windows passwords.

On our ward admin computer, we have several Windows accounts, so one account can be used to reset the password on another account:

• Ward admin account
• Stake admin (STS) account
• My personal account (as ward clerk)