How to reset a machine password when trust is lost
Hi, We currently have an issue where Virtual Machines running windows 7 having thier machine password reset. Whenever users restore to a snapshot from 2 months ago the machines lose their trust relasionship with the domain. Now I am aware that you can set HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Netlogon\Parameters\DisablePasswordChange to 1 to stop the password changes but our Group Policy sets this setting back to 0 and changing this unfortunatly is not a option at the moment. I have found there is a powershell cmdlet reset-computermachinepassword which will do this but I can't run this from my windows 7 machine as i can only login as the local administrator account which has no rights to authenticate with the domain. I have tried running a powershell prompt as myself by right shift clicking on powershell and selecting run as different user. I still get the workstation has trust issues with the domain. So what I am after is there a way to reset the computer password on the workstation itself while it is in this state without having to take the machine off the domain and rejoin it?
April 19th, 2010 5:23am

Sirikan, I never did this on a windows 7 box. But on windows XP you had netdom.exe to do this. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/260575 You can try if this still works for windows 7. Note: Microsoft doesn't support this tool on windows 7. Kind Regards DFTIM me - TWiTTer: @DFTER
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April 19th, 2010 4:48pm

Thanks for the reply. I have actually tried using that tool and it doesn't work in Windows 7 which is why i was trying the powershell cmdlet. Edit: Sorry should elberate more. Tool reports that it can't be run on this version of windows.
April 20th, 2010 2:11am

Hi, Actually there is a working version of NETDOM for Windows 7. You need to install RSAT to be able to have this particular NETDOM version. Install RSAT. Go to Control Panel -> Programs and Features -> Turn Windows features on or off In the treeview, go to Remote Server Administration Tools -> Role Administration Tools -> AD DS and AD LDS Tools and select AD DS Tools. I've used NETDOM for joining computers to the domain before; however, I haven't really used NETDOM to reset a machine password. Maybe you can try this out and let us know how things go. =) Regards, Salvador Manaois III MCSE MCSA MCTS MCITP:EA/SA C|EH CIWA ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bytes & Badz: http://badzmanaois.blogspot.com My Passion: http://flickr.com/photos/badzmanaois My Scripting Blog: http://sgwindowsgroup.org/blogs/badz
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April 20th, 2010 2:47am

Thanks Salvador that did the trick.
April 20th, 2010 3:03am

Hi Salvador, Thanks for reminding me how to find the netdom.exe on Windows 7. However I don't want to install the remote administration tools on every machine I am having this domain membership problem. I found a working solution from my side how to copy the files and get the netdom.exe tool working without a installation. Windows 7: Reset machine password after trust is lost Best regards, Ivan Versluis Networknet.nl Blog
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September 7th, 2011 2:06pm

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