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Question

Can't log in or change password after it has expired

Apr 20, 2018 5:53AM PDT

My son uses my laptop to play some games a lot of the time. He has his own user with Admin. A while ago his password started expiring every month forcing him to change it, we don't know why but just did it anyway, it was only a bit annoying (this does not happen on my user). This time when he tries to log in he gets the Password has expired and must be changed message. After entering the new password, we're greeted with the message "Configuration information could not be read from the domain controller, either because the machine is unavailable or access has been denied." Neither of us have ever been a part of any domains so this makes no sense to me. I've looked around for solutions to this and all the answers take into account the person actually being a part of a work domain or something similar. this laptop is only used at home and has never been connected to a domain (to my knowledge). How do I fix this? Thanks.

Discussion is locked

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Answer
Need to note the login type.
Apr 20, 2018 6:51AM PDT

Also, if this is a Microsoft Email login, then you have to ask Microsoft.

For Windows 10 I continue to use the old utilman.exe trick to get in if all other accounts are locked down.
Google that for now since OS and other details are not here yet.

There are instances where an expired Antivirus Suite has caused this but no mention of that yet.

Tell more.

Post was last edited on July 6, 2018 10:05 AM PDT

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PS. About the new account and files in old account.
Apr 20, 2018 8:20AM PDT

Just COPY those over when needed. DO NOT DELETE OR ALTER THE OLD USER FOLDER OR ACCOUNT until the move is done and then wait until you get a good feeling it's time to clean up.

Also, we only lose what we don't backup. As we know this, you shouldn't have to reach over to copy over their files and these should be on their backups.

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Answer
Re: changed password
Apr 20, 2018 8:12AM PDT

Unclear what happened, indeed.

Make him a new local account. Does he need to be an admin to play his games? If not, make him a standard user. Whatever corporate password policy is applied to his existing account should not be applied to his new account; anyway, that's what you hope.

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Answer
Password expired
Jul 6, 2018 3:01AM PDT

Hello. Have you resolved your problem? The password expiration feature may be enabled on your son’s user. That’s why his password expires every month. To prevent that, he just needs to disable the password expiration feature.