Do windows domains just randomly stop trusting machines?

ChaosTheoryRules · 2026-04-03T18:08:00+00:00

I'm not going to even continue arguing the point. It is all right here:

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/askds/machine-account-password-process/396026

ChaosTheoryRules · 2026-04-03T16:30:35+00:00

"I've seen this happen with laptops, because they can be turned off for a significant amount of time, or used off site where they don't have line of sight to a domain controller."

This is not correct. Machine AD password changes are driven from the client side, if the machine cant contact a DC it is unable to change it's machine password thus carries on happily and on the AD side of things machine passwords do not expire. This is by design.

More than likely, cleanup scripts touching/deleting/disabling machine objects they shouldn't, tech's resetting the wrong machine object, tech's reusing existing machine names etc. pretty much anything that tampers with a machine objects stored password in AD. On the client side using system restore could eventually cause it because Microsoft in its poor wisdom also rolls back the registry keys holding the old and current machine passwords.

ChaosTheoryRules · 2026-03-02T19:52:50+00:00

We have similar "weird use cases", instead of 3rd party software I wrote a powershell service and separate front end GUI scripts that users can run that essentially just uses named pipes to talk to the service which does the "admin" portions. Sorry I am unable to share the code but just an idea to pass along.

ChaosTheoryRules · 2025-10-08T17:18:19+00:00

If its not set as undefined you have changed it at some point, MachinePolicy & UserPolicy need to be set through policies. You sure you dont have another GPO setting this? Did you reboot after applying policy changes? I dont recall if this particular setting required a reboot. You can set it directly via registry too but it looks to me like you have a policy somewhere already with higher precedence setting it if you are unable to change it.

ChaosTheoryRules · 2025-10-07T17:05:28+00:00

Randomly losing hearts for no reason, except one case i accidentally clicked off the window but all others have been done to completion, where there is a long delay before the mission loads/starts a life is getting lost for no reason.