Windows Account Locking Problems
Windows account locking issues can occur for a number of
reasons, but whatever the cause its annoying and pinpointing the
issue can be difficult.
Windows lockout
issues mostly happen to computers on a corporate network or
domain when a policy is implemented to lockout an account
usually after 3 wrong login attempts as a security measure.
Causes and solutions of a Windows
account locking
Has the accounts password been changed
recently? Or did the problem begin after the password was
changed?
Does the same user account login to more
than one computer? Very often the issue can occur if a computer
is attempting to connect using an old password. Any device which
authenticates through a domain can cause this issue; this can
include smart phones which may sync remotely with an
Exchange/Email server.
Processes or Services
Does your computer or any other login to any network resources
using remembered username and password credentials, you can
check this from running services.msc from the Start –
Run menu, also check to make sure there are no drive
mappings using persistent connections with alternative login
credentials.
A local issue
The easiest way to check if the account lockout issue is local
is to recreate the users profile, the easiest way to perform
this is to restart the computer (it has to be restarted and not
simply logged off of the user profile will still be locked)
login using another account with Administrator rights and now go
to c:\\\\documents and Settings and rename the original user
profile giving it an old extension – now log back in the as the
user having the issue and the profile will be recreated, so you
can test again.
If all works next copy over files from My Documents –
Favorites – Desktop, if the account is still locking simply
log back in using the other account with Admin rights and name
the profile back, removing the old extension, now log back in as
the original user and everything will be as it was before.
So now it is beginning to look as though it is not a local
problem, as a final test download the
Account Lockout and
Management Tools downloadable from Microsoft and run
ALockout.dll on your pc this will check any applications of
processes that is using the wrong credentials.
Note
Do not use any servers that host applications
So now we have ascertained that the problem is not local
and this points towards an Active Directory replication issue –
the next step is to run
LockoutStatus.exe
which is part of
- Account Lockout and Management Tools – this will provide details of
the domain controller(s) from which the account is being locked.
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