How to Change the Time to Warn a User to Change Password Before Expiration

 How to Change the Time to Warn a User to Change Password Before Expiration

 Information
If you have password expiration enabled, then this will show you how to change how far in advance (in days) users are warned that their password is about to expire.

 Warning
You can only do this while logged in as an administrator.

OPTION ONE

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Through Local Security Policy Manager

NOTE: This option is only available for the Windows 7 Professional, Ultimate, and Enterprise editions.

1. If you have not already, you must enable password expiration for each user account that you want to have their password expire for that user to be able to get a warning that their password will expire before the maximum password age has been reached.

2. Open the Local Security Policy editor.

3. In the left pane, expand Local Policies, and click on Security Options. (see screenshot below)

4. In the right pane, double click on Interactive logon: Prompt user to change password before expiration. (see screenshot above)

5. Type in how many days you want Windows 7 to begin prompting users to change their password before it expires, then click on OK. (see screenshot below)




6. Close the Local Security Policy editor.

OPTION TWO

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Through Registry Editor

NOTE: This option is available for all Windows 7 editions.1. If you have not already, you must enable password expiration for each user account that you want to have their password expire for that user to be able to get a warning that their password will expire before the maximum password age has been reached.

2. Open the Start Menu, then type regedit in the search box and press enter.

3. If prompted by UAC, then click on Yes.

4. In regedit, navigate to the location below: (see screenshot below)




HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon

5. In the right pane of Winlogon, double click on PasswordExpiryWarning. (see screenshot above)

6. Select (dot) Decimal, then type in how many days you want Windows 7 to begin prompting users to change their password before it expires and click on OK. (see screenshot below)

7. Close regedit.

8. Restart the computer to fully apply.

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A change in Windows 7 & Vista is exist.

Question:

We're a Windows 7 (pre-SP1) DLF is 2003

We updated our GPO recently to expire passwords after 90 days and warn users 10 days before. Our expectation was that Windows 7 would behave similarly to Windows XP:

1. User logs on
2. Windows warns that the password will expire in N days and offer the user the option to change it now or later
3. User clicks no and they login; or they click yes and they change their password.

We tested this change with an account that is five days away from expiring, and we're not seeing any of that. Instead, the account logs on prompt-free and we get this teeny-tiny little key icon in the system tray that says the user should consider changing their password. Its so small and unobtrusive we missed it the first several times we tested. (The last 5 days!) A user could login, walk away to get coffee & come back and miss the notification bubble and completely be unaware of the system tray icon.

Here's an example screenshot:




Have we misconfiguration something? Is this a known issue/bug or undocumented 'feature'?
Is there a fix for that or will we have to impoy a vbscript to workaround this?
Many thanks for your expertise.



Answer:
Not a bug, that's built-in. Vista and 7 changed the notification for the
password change to be less... well.. annoying. Folks can still click on
the symbol in the tray to change their password. And they will be forced
to change it once it's expired.



Source : SevenForum & Microsoft Forum.