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Why does my account keep locking me out?

Return to: ISTS FAQ Home > Password

The majority of account lockouts that occur after a password has been changed are caused by the user or applications caching accounts and passwords.

It is good practice to not allow applications to remember passwords not only for security reasons (if you leave your machine logged in and unattended someone can access the service without needing to know your password) but also to stop account lockouts from happening when you change your password.

Below is a list of common causes of account lockouts after a password change.  Local IT support staff may be required to assist the user in finding saved password information.

The IT Help Desk may be able to provide further assistance if all of these steps fail to resolve the issue.

Browser saved credentials

The Web browser can cache user credentials.  Places to look for Firefox and Internet Explorer are listed below:

Internet Explorer 7

1.  Select the Tools menu, then Internet Options.
2.  Select the Delete... button.
Internet Options dialogue box General tab - Select Delete

3.  Select Delete passwords...
Delete Browsing History box - Select Delete Passwords

 

Firefox 2.0.0.11

1.  Select the Tools menu then select Options
2.  From the top select Privacy, then select Clear Now...
Options Dialog box - Privacy Tab
3.  Untick all boxes except for the option Saved Passwords, then select Clear Private Data Now
Clear Private Data dialog box

 

Persistent drive mappings

Disconnect and reconnect the mapped drive.

Services set to run as a user account.

Run "winmsd" (System information) and navigate to the Software Environment | Services display and look in the column headed "Start name". If the locked out username appears here then this service needs to be disabled or be reconfigured with new credentials

Scheduled jobs

A user can configure programs or scripts to run on specific days and times.
The credentials for the user may have been used for this scheduled program to run under.
Look in Control Panel | Scheduled Tasks for any tasks set to use the account credentials of the user who is being locked out.

Programs remember credentials

Proxy aware programs may have the ability to cache proxy credentials as part of their automated update function.
You will need to look in the configuration settings for something related to Internet or Updates.

Applications likely to do this are:

 

PDA email access

PDAs can be configured to access email and remember the password.

This needs to be supplied with new credentials or manual logon configured. 

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