Kent's Repository A Compilation of Life's Problems and Solutions and other things…
Browsing all posts in: Windows 7

Cached/Saved credentials in Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8

June 7

Recent Microsoft operating systems have changed the way “cached” or “saved” credentials are stored. A cached credential is generated whenever the user selects “remember my password”. Normally, this feature works great, however, sometimes when a network/resource password is changed, Windows will still send the older locally cached/saved credential instead.

Under ideal conditions, Windows will see that the credential is no longer valid and prompt the user for new credentials. On the other hand, under certain conditions (not sure what these are), Windows refuses to acknowledge the “this password is incorrect” server response and it attempts to authenticate repeatedly with the outdated/old credential. Depending on your network’s security settings, this behavior could cause your account to become disabled or locked-out. To remedy this, a user must manually remove or update their cached credentials, the best course of action is to remove the cached credential. Instructions on how to remove cached credentials are below, courtesy of www.petenetlive.com

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Problems installing Windows Updates?

May 31

There are a ton of fixes on the net for Windows Update problems, this one, however, might be a one-stop-shop for Windows Update repairs

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Windows Clean Install Using Upgrade Media

May 31

Upgrade keys/media sometimes make it difficult for you to perform clean installs of Windows Operating Systems. Clean Installs are often needed when recovering from hardware failure. There are a dozen workarounds, including the perfectly OK method of calling Microsoft during activation, Microsoft will have you run a remote-support tool which is activated with a special key-code provided over the phone.

Here are some of the other workarounds:

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Allow non-admin users to install printers via GPO

March 8

After combing the net, it looks like there are several policies that should be configured in order to properly allow non-administrator users to install printers

1. Computer Configuration (Administrative Templates): “Point and Print Restrictions”—>Set to Disabled (This seems to be the most important one, users kept receiving UAC prompts until I configured this policy)

2. Computer Configuration: “Devices: Prevent users from installing printer drivers”—>Set to Disabled

3. Computer Configuration (Administrative Templates): “Allow non-administrators to install drivers for these device setup classes” —> Define appropriate set up classes as found here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/ff553426(v=vs.85).aspx

As always, I’m anything but omniscient, many thanks to the following sites for helping put all this together:

1. http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/winserverGP/thread/67e34b3c-8e53-4a38-9e99-92c3dd53e38a/

2. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/ff553426(v=vs.85).aspx

3. http://community.spiceworks.com/how_to/show/1269-stop-the-windows-7-prompts-for-printer-install

4. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/7/archive/2011/07/11/allowing-standard-users-to-install-network-printers-on-windows-7-without-prompting-for-administrative-credentials.aspx