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I have a remote employee who works from her laptop, which is joined to the domain. The only connectivity she has with the domain is when she logs in and connects to VPN.

She was on maternity leave for about 3-4 months and just returned now to find that she is no longer able to login on her laptop. It says her username/password is incorrect. However, we verified that it is in fact the correct password.

My assumption is that the password expired and the laptop couldn't connect to the DC to sync with the new password. Unfortunately, she can't remember the local user password either. And if we try to login with a different domain user, it says no logon servers are available to process the request.

Is our only option now to boot into the Windows setup and reset the password?

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  • A local account with Admin rights on the computer would save the day
    – clhy
    Apr 26, 2016 at 19:07
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    Is the account in question a domain account? If that is case, you can easily have a network administrator reset her password. How did you verify the password is still correct? If you are getting the error "no logon servers available", that is most likely a network issue. Make sure that computer is plugged into the network. Can this employee log onto other machines? DO NOT boot into Windows setup to reset a domain password (for obvious reasons that won't help)
    – InterLinked
    Apr 26, 2016 at 19:10
  • It should be possible to initiate the VPN connection before logging in, as explained in the accepted answer to this question on SU. Then she should be able to log in, and, if her password is expired, she should be prompted to change it. If she is still unable to log in, reset her password and try again.
    – FastEthernet
    Apr 26, 2016 at 19:17
  • It is a domain account but there is no connectivity to the domain unless she connects with the VPN client. Unfortunately, she is in another state so we can't just plug the laptop in on the network. The plan was to reset the password on the local admin account (she can't remember it).
    – blizz
    Apr 26, 2016 at 19:17
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    @FastEthernet yea unfortunately we tried the old and new passwords; neither worked. I think probably the password hit its age limit after the laptop wasn't used for so many months. I guess I'll have to use a boot utility to reset the local account.
    – blizz
    Apr 26, 2016 at 19:39

1 Answer 1

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We could boot in safe mode, the built-in administrator account will be enabled in safe mode. Then we will be able to reset the local account's password from computer management.

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