Weird Problem

[ITDudeinphoenix]

Hello:

We are experiencing an usual issue and are confused as its cause or resolution.

We are a medium sized company with 1 corporate office and 47 branches in multiple time zones. We are running NT 4.0 with SP6. In corporate we have a PDC and BDC locally where the user lists are maintained. All of the branches are also NT 4.0 and operate as a BDC and are sync'd nightly to the corporate PDC.

Everything ran smoothly until we modified the domain security option to force users to change domain passwords every 20 days. Intermittently, over the course of sevveral days, accounts, regardless of group membership, throughout the company became locked out, although the lock out option in User Manager is not enabled. A side note: I've only been with company a few months but according to the existing staff members, this problem reared its ugly head before and instead of addressing the matter the change password function was simply disabled.

Any ideas?

Thank you in advance.

 

[bchizary]

what programs do you have running on the pc's and/or other servers?
also is it everyones users accounts or the same few that lock out?

BenC

 

[Jpoandl]

Remember that the PDC has the only writable database. So if users are trying to change thier password AND the PDC is not available, they will not be able to change the password and get locked out.

You state that the BDC's synch up with the PDC at night. This might be where your problem lies.

-just my thoughts..

Joseph L. Poandl
MCSE 2003

If your company is in need of experts to examine technical problems/solutions, please check out

http://www.NJCOMPUTERNETWORKS.com

(Sales@njcomputernetworks.com)

 

[packdragon]

If there are accounts being used as service accounts, then you will need to set their passwords to Never Expire or else the service won't be able to use it anymore after the password expires.

Also, if users are logged into multiple machines and their password changes, their account will start to become locked out because the machines they are logged into are trying to renew their ticket but failing because it is using the old password. Users will have to pay attention now and make sure they log off machines they are no longer using.

- Zoe, that's ZOH-EEE, get it right please
- Just a little ol' MCP at Solien Technology
-

http://www.solien.com

 

[mizzy]

I've just had this problem with one user in our office.
Scared the living out of me though it was some sort of virus.

I checked the event viewer and noticed that the PDC was reporting loads of Master Browser elections (every 5 seconds). This was being forced by the BDC that believed it was the Master Browser. I stopped the "server" service on the Backup domain controller that was forcing all the elections and restarted it.

Once I did this the problem went away, phew...

 

[ReddLefty]

Here is a FAQ that can help you resolve your Master Browser issues. It applies for Win NT and up.

Master Browser issues faq96-3728



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