Introduction
This program allows you to change an NT login password from the command line. You must supply the old password to perfrom the change.
This only works under Windows NT.
A server or domain can be configured to require a user to log on before changing the password on a user account. In that case, only members of the Administrators or Account Operators local group or the user himself can change the password for a user account. If logging on is not required, the user can change the password for any user account, as long as the user knows the current password.
If a screen saver is set to lock the workstation, or the workstation is locked by the user after the password is changed, you may still have to use the old password to unlock the workstation (for some reason it doesn't appear to use the new password until after you log out, perhaps it's doing some kind of caching..)
If you have administrative privileges, then you can change a password without specifying the original one.
Installation
There is no special procedure to follow. Just place the program in the Windows directory or in a dedicated folder (directory). Since this is a console application it would make sense to have the program in the path.
chPasswd has been developed and tested on NT 4.0 and requires no additional runtime DLLs other than netapi32.dll which comes standard with Windows NT 4.0.
Usage
chpasswd.exe v1.0.0.4 compiled Dec 1 2000 at 12:02:43
USAGE: chpasswd.exe [-q] [-d domain] [-u username]
... [-o old password] <-n new password>
-q (optional) quiet operation. disclaimer is not displayed.
-d (optional) server or domain name. if not
specified, the PDC of the caller is used.
-u (optional) user name. if not specified, the
user name of the caller is used.
-o (optional if administrator) old password
-n (required) new password
The utility requires Windows NT 4.0 or higher and the netapi32.dll.
- Initial version.
v1.0.0.2 - May 17, 1999
- Added O/S version check.
- Changed call to netapi32.dll to use LoadLibrary() call.
v1.0.0.3 - July 8, 2000
- If old password not provided, use NetUserSetInfo() to change password.
To do this you must have admin privledges.
v1.0.0.4 - December 1, 2000
- If old password not specified, any domain name specified is
ignored. Changed to alwys use specified domain name.
Thanks to Bart van Dongen (mailto:b.vandongen@every-angle.com)
for reporting this.
- Made sure to free the servername buffer if allocated.