7.3. Monday-Morning Admin Tasks

We'll now cover some common operational tasks that you may find yourself doing regularly. Our experience is that anyone in a help-desk role will find their Monday mornings consumed by these tasks if they don't carefully consider how to design their authentication mechanisms. Check out the discussions on passphrases and smart cards earlier in this chapter to see what we mean. We'll cover domain-based security principals because this is what you will find yourself working with the vast majority of the time.

7.3.1. Forgotten Passwords

The first challenge is dealing with a person who can't remember their password. This is usually the number-one call to the help desk after the weekend. Let's see how you can reset that password for your user. After all, the user is your customer, and you need to provide quality and timely service. If you are using the GUI, then you need to navigate to the user account in question in Active Directory Users and Computers. Then right-click the user and select Reset Password to open the Reset Password dialog box.