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Bernie SalvaggioFlag for United States of America

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Resetting domain passwords

I'm at a school and the students forget their passwords constantly.  I had an executable program that I think the last sysadmin wrote that was in a shared folder and teachers could run it, type in a student's username and it would reset the password to nothing.  Problem is that they hardcoded the domain name in the program and I just finished redoing the domain, with a different domain name.  So....

Does anyone know of a way/script/program that I can share to the teachers that they can use to enter a username and have it reset the student's password? Thanks!

Windows 2000 Server
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Pete Long
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I think this is what you are after :)

Program: ResetPW.EXE: Remote Password Change Utility
http://wettberg.home.texas.net/resetpw.htm
another method is to create a TASKpad that has password unlock, and change password,  and send a copy to all the teachers

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Pete, unfortunately as quoted from the page:
"it is not intended for use on domain userid/passwords"

Domain being the key word.  

Could you expound a little more on what you mean in your second poast?
I used to create a taskpad that I gve to all my helpdesk staff, using that taskpad thay could unlock accounts and change passwords and nothing else

Creating a Custom Password-Reset MMC
http://www.winnetmag.com/Article/ArticleID/9189/9189.html
Ok, the taskpad solution won't work because most of the teachers are on Win98 boxes.  The vbscript and wmi solutions talk about resetting Admin passwords on client boxes.

I need something that a teacher can run, from a Win98 box that will pop up a window, ask for a user id, and reset the password, in W2K server Active Directory, to a blank password.
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Pete Long
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NOTE you can install DSclient on a 98 PC you will find a copy of DSclient on a windows 2000 or 2003 server CD
Insert the Windows 2000 Server CD
Move to the Clients\Win9x folder
Double click on Dsclient.exe
Click Next to the wizard start-up screen
Select the 'I accept this agreement' on the license screen and click Next
Click Next to the installation start dialog box
A number of files will be installed on the client machine
Once the file copy has completed click Finish to the wizard
Click Yes to restart the machine

rename the file you downloaded above from ResetPassword.txt to RenamePassword.vbs and run it :)
if your scrabbling about to find the CD you can download dsclient here http://www.4help.vt.edu/lm/downloads/Dsclient.exe
Ok, I tested it on my server and it works, not as good as I'd like because it has to be done from a command prompt but it works.  I'll further check it out on 98 machines a bit later.  In the mean time, if there's a way that this can just be double-clicked and pop up a box asking for the username to reset and always reset it to a blank password, that'd be a perfect answer.

Thanks.
Try using this small utility called NTADMIN.EXE

http://www.citrixtools.com/utilities.htm

I have this sitting on a workstation and when I need to reset a users password I just run it.
It lets you select the user and let's you set a blank password.
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lkhintonsr

THIS IS YOUR BEST SOLUTIONS HANDS DOWN.

GO TO THIS URL, READ THE DIRECTIONS...  AGAIN, I SERIOUSLY STRESS, "READ THE DIRECTIONS"...

DOWNLOAD THE TOOL!  IT IS "THE BEST" TOOL ON THE WEB I HAVE EVER COME ACROSS.

http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/editor.html 

IT WORKS FOR WINNT, WIN 2000, WINXP PRO, WIN 2003.
lkhintonsr this is a tool for resetting blank/forgotten passwords, that involves rebooting into a cut down Linux kernel - the poster needs an administration tool

I know a bit about that tool  ^^^^^^ :)
 see my website http://www.petenetlive.com/Tech/Windows/WinGen/passwordrecovery.htm

but this is NOT what the poster requires

Pete
nomi17, that does look like a good tool.  My only concern is that when I clicked on the ... button to browse users, Administrator, among others, came up. I don't know if a teacher would be able to reset the admin password but needless to say, that wouldn't be good.  I'll let you know after I get a chance to test it.

lkhintonsr, Pete was right on with his response.

Thanks for the suggestions though.
nomi17, sorry, that doesn't work for anyone other than an administrator, even with delegation.

Pete, thank you, with some modification, that script does work.  I also had to go into AD and delegate account management & password reset permissions to the student OU for the Teacher group so they could actually accomplish this.

I wanted to have a box pop up and ask the user for the username to reset and for them to not have to enter a password.  So, other than some of the prompts that I changed, here's what I changed to make that happen in case anyone's interested

The section in the beginning

If Wscript.Arguments.Count <> 2 Then
  Wscript.Echo "Syntax Error. Correct syntax is:"
  Wscript.Echo "cscript ResetPassword.vbs UserNTName NewPassword"
  Wscript.Quit
End If

I commented that out and added the line:

txtInput = InputBox("This program will reset a student's password to 'password'." + vbCrLf + vbCrLf + "Please enter the username (student ID) of the student whose password you would like to reset.","Password Reset Program")

This caused the box to open that I wanted to prompt for a username

I then changed the two lines

strUserNTName = Wscript.Arguments(0)
strPassword = Wscript.Arguments(1)

to read

strUserNTName = txtInput
strPassword = "password"

Nothing special at all, I just wanted to document it for anyone else interested in doing the same thing.  Thanks again Pete.

-Bernie
Thanks for the follow up Bernie

Glad you got what you needed :)

regards

Pete