User account constantly locked out...

Are you being hacked? I found that hackers busted into one of our Windows 2000 machines and locked out the Administrator account, so only their "admins" account could log in. See if typical hacker services like firedaemon.exe or DWRCS.exe are running.

I believe that the user has recently changed his password. This same user also has a service or application, which uses his user account, assigned to it. Since the password has been changed, it will also need to be changed on the particular service or application using his user account. This service / application attempts to start, but fails. After a number of times (specified by your account policies) the account becomes locked out. Note: I have also had this happen if the user is logged into another computer and simply locked the workstation. The account is still using the old password.

One way to check is to view the event logs. Find out which computer the error or problem is coming from. Also check with the user, what computers he uses, what services may use his user account, or what application is dependant on his user account.

You will need to do some reserach to find where the problem is.

Best of luck.

We had a similar problem. It turned out to be related to the use of Terminal Services which were closed rather than logged out. This kept causing a lock-out. When we made sure that we logged out of Terminal Services correctly, the problem went away. Hope this helps.

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