Affects of wrong Server time

Excuse me, the 1st sentence of this question should read," We just had the clock on one of our servers, on the domain change (how?) to the current day 8 years from now."

Well, I think that since the passwords had already expired, you'd have to re-enter the passwords in User Manager and then check the "password never expires" check box in order for that to take effect. If you just check the check box without re-entering the password, it will not take effect until the current (expired) password is changed. As to how or why the time changed. . .I've had this happen on several servers and have never been able to pinpoint exactly why. Sometimes it appears to havesomething to do with antivirus software, scanning, etc., but that's not 100%. The way we have solved this problem - or worked around it if you will - is to set up all of our servers to synch their time settings over the Internet with the NIST (Nat'l. Institute of Standards & Technology) time servers. We've used the w32time.exe program that comes with the NT Resource Kit (I think you can also download it from the Microsoft web site). You can set the server to synch w/NIST once or twice a day and this usually keeps any problems from creeping in. Hope this helps!

The server that had its year changed to 8 years from now, it MUST have been a PDC or BDC. Those are the only machines that could affect the user accounts like this.
When a domain controller has its year changed like that, and the user accounts areset to have their passwords expire at some time in the future (every 42 days is the default), then changing the year on a domain controller would expire all of th accounts.
And they would be flagged as being expired in the SAM database, where all of this info is set.
So, even if you then changed the year back to 2002 on your domain controller, the accounts would still have that flag checked off in the SAM database. That is why your users still have expired passwords.

You will have to resetthe user passwords. The users can do this themselves on their workstations. You don't need to go and check the Password Never Expires checkbox on every user account. There is a better way:
Opening User Manager for Domains on one of yor domain controllers, click Policies -> Account, and then in the Maximum Password Age section, change it to Password Never Expires. Click OK to save it. This saves the setting on a domain level for all users.
Remember, do this after all users have reset their passwords.

This is not the answer you were looking for as that has been provided above. My main worry is the how part of your question. It may well have been a virus, but it could also have bee a hacker trying to get into your network. By putting the time forward on your server he has disabled the passwords of your users, he may also be able to reset the passwords and gain access to your user accounts. Do you use a firewall or proxy server when you use the internet.
I would suggest that you tighten up onyour security. Even something like lockdown 2000 will help prevent hackers getting access to your system.
Personnaly I don't like password never expires setting for users as it makes users sloppy and the system less secure.
Best of luck
JV

Just a simple addition to all of the suggestions thus far- check the BIOS of the server in question. BIOS time will prevail over windows time and if it is off, it can force windows time to comply. :)

This question was closed by the author