Change Local Administrator Password with Group Policy

How to reset the local Administrator password enterprise-wide all at once using Group Policy GPO / GPP. As a Systems Administrator, you want to limit the amount of time you have to physically walk around to each computer so you can be more productive with other tasks.

Resetting the local Administrator password can be reset by using Group Policy Preferences very quickly and easily.

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[PC-Addicts]

You are welcome. Thank you for the kind words and I'm glad I was able to help ya out!

[NicolasElHayek]

You saved me alot of headache! I truly appreciate the effort into making this, as a non-technical guy with the need to solve these problems at work, you saved me a ton of time and research

[PC-Addicts]

Glad it helped ya out and you are welcome! That sounds strange that it works only sometimes. I don't have a quick answer for this one. I do have plans on setting this all up again but with Server 2012 and will have a whole series of videos. I hope to test this out for ya then.

[PC-Addicts]

Ah yes, I gotcha... What I would do in my old school district is run ProcMon (process monitor) by sysinternals, launch the app while logged in as domain user, and look for access denied entries in ProcMon. From there you could figure out exactly what directories / registry keys they needed write access to and adjust accordingly. This sounds like a good possible video to make one day!

[LMBCBrian]

Thanks for the video Chris. Its guys like you that make junior admins like me look good, AND get ahead in this business. Thanks again, and it worked perfect.

[PC-Addicts]

Thanks! If you chance the domain administrator's password no, it will not reset the local administrator passwords. Also, if you run this GPO (this tutorial) in the main OU (all servers, clients, etc computers are under), then yes, it will reset all of the computers/servers/etc's computers local administrator password (without affecting your domain administrator password). Hope that makes sense and I answered your question.

[PC-Addicts]

You are welcome! Ya, your situation sounds a little more difficult. Question for you: Do you know the current local admin password on the computers?

[mrkleen]

Very interesting, though I can't use this. The machines I wouldn't know the admin password to are joined to a non-windows domain controller. Though I suppose I could login as that domain admin if they still have machine accounts then join them to my windows PDC. Regardless thanks for the videos like these, gives us food for thought even when our setup is complicated.

[joseskatalitico]

nice video, one question do you share this password with all the it staff or you add their users to administrators group?

[PC-Addicts]

Quick question though.... on one of the clients, can you verify the local administrator account is named: administrator, and also verify that it is not disabled/locked... I haven't fully tested the above with different scenarios, but I will when I have some time. Let me know how it turns out please, or if you still have probs.

[mrkleen]

For many of them yes, they are based on my golden master image. The machines that were handed down to me... well I have a list of possible passwords to try and in the worst case I can use your other video to reset it (thanks for that one too) or better yet reinstall the OS because it is probably lacking several years of updates/expired licenses for software.

[PC-Addicts]

Maybe you can write a Powershell script and use WMI to reset the passwords if you know the Administrator password.

[PC-Addicts]

Welcome! OUCH!! You want to give domain users local admin rights? This school district was doing similar things, and I removed it right away. Well, for whatever reason, I'm sure you have a good reason to doing this. If you have to, sure there is a way. I can't write it up here in this comment, maybe I can shoot a video later this week and write up a tutorial for you.

[PC-Addicts]

You are welcome - hope it works out for ya - let us know how it goes!

[robinlarsson]

Solved it:

Password complexity was the problem causing it.
Also had to put a new local group to put the new user to administrators built in.

[mrbrownsound]

Some labs rooms in my college, when you boot with F12 into admin the password is hello. It's actually what our professors advice to get past the blocks to run a server VM, on the local machine, lol.

[subaruimpreza]

thanks....
got a question: i need to add domain users to local admin group.. so who ever logged into the workstation will have the admin rights. how can i do it via gpo

[mariusza]

can we setup lenght and complexity of local administrators password by gpo?

[gparthiban]

Helps a lot, Thanks for the upload Chris. Have a question for you on GPO, hope you could help me. I have a setup a few GPOs (Logon Scripts, Common Wallpaper, IE Homepage). The GPO's does not apply to the clients all the time. Example, the wallpaper does not remain the same, randomly changes to the default windows wallpaper. gpupdate command does not help. Any thoughts? Thanks in advance

[HensaStralem]

It's not something that sits well with me either. I actually had to do this a while ago because some of the teachers were using specialized software on their laptops that would not function under a non-admin account. Given the choice of that or having to field a dozen calls a day asking for me or my boss to jog up three flights of stairs to provide our credentials whenever they wanted to run said software, it was an easy choice to make.

If you know of a better method, I'd love to hear it.