My internet proxy account at work keeps locking out each morning when I boot my machine. I can't work out why. I suspect it is related to the Apple Time Service process. This is what is happening:
I have a Macbook that I dual boot with Windows XP. I use Mac OSX for personal and Windows XP for work.
If I have been using Mac OSX at home and then later boot into Windows XP at work, the system time in XP is initially wrong. Bootcamp has a process that runs in XP to correct this - Apple Time Service.
Apple Time Service needs internet access in order to look up the correct system time.
I suspect that somehow it knows my proxy username but must have an incorrect password, because my proxy account keeps getting locked out.
Some other points: At work I'm a contractor. I don't have a domain account, so I don't actually log into the network as such. I just get an IP address which give me access to a couple of resources. So there is no weird group policy / Active Directory proxy settings being applied when I log in.
I've also checked in Internet Explorer (where the system proxy settings are stored), and I don't seem to have any proxy-related settings set:
- "Automatically detect settings": off
- "Use automatic configuration script": off
- "Use a proxy server for your LAN": off
I just don't get how any start-up process could possibly know about the proxy and be locking out my account.
I think it must be the Apple Time Service doing this because I can't see any other processes accessing the internet when I boot up. (I've been looking in Tcpview.exe)
Also, when I disabled the Apple Time Service I didn't seem to have the issue - although then it is a pain as I must manually reset my system clock each morning.
