Why Does My Password Expire in Windows?

A reader on the forum asked yesterday why his password kept expiring on his Windows Vista installation, so here’s the answer for everybody: Windows XP Professional, Windows Vista Business and Windows Vista Ultimate all have a built-in feature to allow user accounts to have a password expiration.

The problem comes in when your local user account has been set to expire the password, because there’s not an obvious place to change that setting in Vista, although it’s easy to do. Note that this problem doesn’t exist in the Home editions of Windows.

Open the Local Users and Groups administration panel by typing in lusrmgr.msc into the start menu search box. (or the Run box on XP) Select ”Users” in the left hand pane, and then double-click your user account in the list.

 On this screen you’ll find the “Password never expires” checkbox.

Just make sure the box is checked and you won’t be forced to change your password anymore.

Windows XP/Vista Home Users

If you are using the Home edition of Windows, you can download User Manager for XP/Vista Home from XPHomeTools. It’s a shareware software, but you can use the trial version to disable expiration.

The Geek is the founder of How-To Geek and a geek enthusiast. This article was written on 08/30/07 and tagged with: Security, Windows Vista

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Comments (8)

1. September 7, 2007 6:55 am
   Wes King

   Windows Vista Home Premium does not allow you to do this. Are you aware of how to change the password expiration on Home Premium?

2. October 26, 2007 9:13 pm
   Mark McDaniel

   What happens if it does expire? I have a vista installation that has a single user account plus the administrator account. At login I have tried all know passwords for the single user account but am getting the wrong password error. I am sure I know the password to the Administrator user. How can I get Vista to startup using the Administraotr account insted of the other user?

3. November 15, 2007 12:51 pm
   jma

   net accounts /maxpwage:unlimited

   

4. March 29, 2008 3:16 pm
   Andreas Moser

   @jma: Exactly! Solved my problem for Vista Home Premium which has no lusrmgr nor gpedit.
   Thank you!

5. September 17, 2008 1:19 am
   bul

   thank you very much. It solved my problem!

6. January 21, 2009 7:37 am
   robert

   ok using vista home premium so my pw won t go poof correct ! ?

7. March 1, 2009 1:51 pm
   lamo

   Hey yeah, so is there really nothing you can do for vista home premium??? Because everything suggested here doesn’t work….

8. April 29, 2009 4:08 pm
   Kevin

   Thank you so much! It worked, huge help!