Vista - Password Expiration in Vista

Information

This normally only applies to the Vista Business and Vista Ultimate versions. By default, Vista is set up with passwords which will expire after 42 days. 14 days in advance, Vista will start warning you of this fact.

NOTE

You will need to do this from within an administrator account.

WARNING

If you have this user account setup to logon automatically and change or remove the password, then be sure to change or remove it here to.

• How to Manage Stored User Names and Passwords in Vista
• How to Enable or Disable Secure Logon in Vista
• How to Make Vista Require a Username and Password at Logon
• How to Display Information About Previous Logons During User Logon in Vista
• How to Logon Automatically at Startup in Vista
• How to Remove a Password from a User Account in Vista
• How to Create a Password Reset Disk in Vista
• How to Reset a User Account Password in Vista
• How to Create a Password for a User Account in Vista
• How to Prevent or Allow a User to Change their Password in Vista
• How to Set Vista Account Lockout when a User Fails to Logon

NOTE

The Vista Home Basic and Home Premium editions do not have this feature. See METHOD THREE below for how with these editions instead.

1. Open the Local Security Policy editor.

2. In the left pane, under Security Settings, click the little arrow next to Account Policies to drop down and view the folder
options. (See screenshot below)

3. Click on the Password Policy folder.

4. In the right pane, right click on Maximum password age and click Properties.

5. To Stop Password Expiration -

A) Type 0 (number zero) and click OK. (See screenshots below step 6)

6. To Change the Password Expiration Date -

A) Type in a number between 1 and 999 days between expirations.
NOTE: If you would like to change the other options, then just right click them and click Properties. Click the Explain tab to see what it is for and how to set it.

NOTE

The Vista Home Basic and Home Premium editions do not have this feature. See METHOD THREE below for how with these editions instead.

OPTION ONE:

1. Open the Local Users and Groups manager.

2. In the left pane, click on Users. (See screenshot below step 3)

3. In the middle pane, right click on the user account you want to do this with and click on Properties. (See screenshot below)

4. To Stop Password Expiration -

A) Check Password never expires. (See screenshot below step 6)

5. To Change the Password Expiration Date -

A) Check one of the other options you want to apply. (See screenshot below step 6)

6. Click on OK. (See screenshot below)

7. Close the Local Users and Groups window.

NOTE

You can do this method in all versions of Vista. This will affect all user accounts on the computer.

1. Open a elevated command prompt.

2. To Stop Password Expiration -

A) In the elevated command prompt, type net accounts /maxpwage:unlimited and press Enter. (See screenshot below)

B) Close the elevated command prompt window when you get the The command completed successfully message.

4. To Change the Password Expiration Date-

A) In the elevated command prompt, type net accounts /maxpwage:(1-999) and press Enter. (See screenshot below)
EXAMPLE: To change it back to the default 42 days, you would type: net accounts /maxpwage:42
NOTE: Change it to whatever you want between 1 to 999 days before password expiration.

B) Close the elevated command prompt window when you get the The command completed successfully message.