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custom password policy

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by bcapella

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I am looking for a way to create a custom password policy for a Windows 2000 domain. The requirements I want for the password are 6-8 characters and at least 1 alpha and 1 numeric plus the ability to use the characters @ # $. It has to be this way due to our mainframes password policy. Is there a way to specify these settings because the ones that arte available in the group policy are not enough.

thank you
Bill Capella
HESAA

1 reply

by timwalsh

The short answer is that there is no way to do so directly from Windows.

Most of your requirements are met if you enable the "Passwords must meet complexity requirements" setting in Password Policies.

Complexity requirements are as follows:

A) Passwords must be 6 or more characters in length.
B) Passwords cannot contain your user name or any part of your full name.
C) Passwords must contain characters from at least three of the following four groups:
1. English upper-case letters (A - Z)
2. English lower-case letters (a - z)
3. Westernized Arabic numerals (0 - 9)
4. Special characters - punctuation marks and other symbols

These settings are hardcoded into a file named Passfilt.dll. In order to modify these settings in any way, you would need to write your own .dll file to replace the one provided by Microsoft.

Take a look at the following MS Knowledge Base articles for a little more info:

225230 - Enabling Strong Password Functionality in Windows 2000

279890 - Password Is Not Compliant with the System Password Complexity Policy

Having said all that, take a look at Password Policy Enforcer at http://tinyurl.com/l5k8

Hope this helps.

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