Wanting to change administrator password

[force5]

I want to change the Administrator's password for our domains but we have many, many programs and more importantly services that are already set to run with the current administrators password. If I make the change, will I also have to go into each service and change the password from there also. Any other problems I may run into????

Thanks!!

 

[MrRetro]

Bump this up as I too am curious about this.
We are just now getting ready for sox compliance and my existing NT network needs the ability to change the admin password every 90 days.
I am under the impression that in the nt world this is a very bad thing and will cause a lot of services to stop working and general network chaos. I wish I had a better answer for you force5 but I am replying in hopes somebody can add some clarity to this as well.
I am also curious if a win2k/03 network with AD installed handles these admin changes much more gracefully.
Any info is appreciated.

 

[ashleym]

Why do so many services have to run as the admin account, if they have the necessary permissions they should be able to run as system, not admin. Running services as the admin account is a major security risk.

AM

 

[MrRetro]

Ashley are you asking a question or making a statement ?
Microsoft procedures/policies change and this nt network like many others has been in existance for many years (1998 I believe).
Lots of stuff has changed since then including software installs, service accounts etc.

Your post isn't alot of help I'm afraid.

 

[LiverpoolFan]

First off, yes all services that use the administrator account will need to be changed.

However, while you are doing this you may as well create new accounts for the services (for instance you could clone the administrator account and give it a name of BackupExec for backup exec services), then give these accounts really obscure passwords that only a couple of people may know of.

If you do not want to clone the administrator account, or are not allowed to, it may with worth looking into (for instance) creating brand new accounts and adding the account to the Backup group etc and then look into User Rights (ie Logon As A Service etc.)

Hope this helps, let me know.