Is there a way to allow users to change their passwords from a web page in Windows?
We have a client that has hundreds of 'kiosk' workstations because all the users use web services that have their own logins. All the machines are domain-joined and they sign in to one account automatically.
One of the 'web apps' users sign in to relies on each individual having an account in active directory. When a user forgets their AD password, we would like to reset it to a default password that everyone in the company knows, and we tell the user to go reset it.
On a 'normal' windows network, they would hit CTRL+ALT+DEL, put in their username and the default password, and then be prompted to change it.
...but on a kiosk network, they are already signed in to the generic account, and the web app has no way of forcing the password change. So they still can't sign in. We also can't enforce policies of expiring passwords every $x months.
I know Outlook Web Access has a form built-in for allowing users to change passwords. Unfortunately, this client doesn't use Outlook Web Access.
Is there a 3rd party utility or a better way of allowing users to change their passwords? Even a desktop app we can tell them to run to enter a username, default password, new password, and a confirmation would be useful.
I finally found a solution. In Windows Server 2003 and earlier IIS creates an
iisadmpwd
folder underc:\windows\system32\inetsrv\
. That app can be used to change passwords.Unfortunately the app is no longer distributed with Windows Server 2008 or later, but you can apparently copy the source over to a Windows Server 2008 or later machine and get it to run.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/asiatech/archive/2009/03/17/how-to-manage-my-windows-user-password-through-iis-web-portal.aspx
A little Microsoft hate: Be careful if you try to install this on a server with existing websites (especially Outlook Web Access) as something as simple as registering a single DLL will take down IIS and cause all your apps to start throwing errors until your ApplicationHost.config file as documented here:
http://devfarm.it/asp-net-mvc-2/install-website-windows-2008-64-bit-ms-exchange/