User Passwords

[teknovision]

Hi all!!

Everytime I want to access a user's machine (Domain User) I find myself having to ask them for their password, does SBS2003 store their passwords somewhere?

I have set the password lifecycle to 33 days, if I have to sk them every month this is going to be a bit bizarre!!

Thanks for any help you can give me!!

Phil

 

[NickFerrar]

If the PCs are in an AD domain you just need to connect as the domain admin. If it's in a workgroup I guess you should create a local account on each PC. It depends why you want to acces the client PC, i.e. do you need to be logged on as the actual user for some reason?

Passwords are stored in a non-reversible hashed form (unless default settings are overridden), there's no place you can look to see everyone's password (thankfully!). It's bad security practice to be in a situation where you have to request user passwords on a regular basis (and if I were them I'd be reluctant to tell you).

 

[teknovision]

Thanks! I suppose my greeness with all of this shows.. . So, if I log on to the user's machine with Domain Admin will the changes be reflected when the user logs in next time round?

For instance someone had a problem with Outlook i.e. they were working offline, would I have been able to log-in as Admin uncheck Working Offline in Outlook and the state would have been preserved when the user logged in?

Cheers,

Phil

 

[NickFerrar]

Things like Outlook settings are indeed user-specific. However the best way to fix these sort of issues (if you can't visit the actual PC) is to remote-control them once the user has logged in (and with their permission!). We use SMS here for this but it's overkill for your needs. If all your clients are Windows XP you can use Remote Desktop for this, otherwise look at something like VNC or Dameware.

 

[teknovision]

Remote Desktop is what I use currently and that's why I always find myself having to ask them for their password so I can change things like Outlook settings.. . maybe I should just use Remote Assistance then (is that what you mean by 'Remote-control')?

While I'm on, do you know if it is possible to edit GPO for Outlook?

Many many thanks,

Phil

 

[A15]

I know it might sound weird but I found it very useful to use a pen and paper to manually write all my user passwords