Unable to change the Account Password Policy as an admin.

furtwangler · 02 Feb 2013

I've been given an old work PC (Windows 7 Pro) and I'm trying to remove the password for my user account. My account has admin status and as I understand it I need to disable the "Password must meet complexity requirements" under password policy but I don't have access. Here's what I see: https://i.imgur.com/ZwR5Be8.png

Does anyone know a way around this? I tried to log in on the Administrator account as well but it made no difference... Thanks!

ICIT2LOL · 02 Feb 2013

Hello and welcome furtwangler I have been using some old education department machines and sometimes you can find this info out in the BIOS - have you had a look it there.

I found that the machines I worked on were set up in a very convoluted manner too.

UsernameIssues · 03 Feb 2013

You might also consider setting the OS back to its default security settings via an elevated command prompt and this code:

Code:

secedit /configure /cfg %windir%\inf\defltbase.inf /db defltbase.sdb /verbose

I tested the setting that your image showed by enabling the password complexity rule and then I used the code above. That code set the password complexity policy back to the default state of disabled.

There maybe a setting that prevents even local admins from changing the local security policies - such a setting might also prevent the code above from resetting the OS back to its defaults. Let us know how it goes for you,