Prevent Users From Changing Their Logon Passwords in Windows 7

If you share your Windows 7 computer with family and friends, you have most likely set up user accounts for them with passwords applied. Any user can choose to change the password on their account. If you don’t want the passwords changed for certain user accounts, there is a way to prevent other users from changing their account passwords.

Open the Start menu and enter “lusrmgr.msc” (without the quotes) in the Search programs and filesedit box. Click the link in the list of results or press Enter.

The Local Users and Groups dialog box displays. Select Users in the left pane.

The list of users displays in the right pane. Right-click on the user for which you want to restrict password changes and select Properties from the popup menu.

The Properties dialog box displays. Make sure the General tab is the active tab, clicking on it, if necessary. Select the User cannot change password check box so there is a check mark in the box and click Apply.

To close the Properties dialog box, click OK.

To close the Local Users and Groups dialog box, select Exit from the File menu.

Now that user will not be able to change the password on their account. To change the password in an account, select Control Panel on the Start menu within that account.

On the Control Panel dialog box, click on the User Accounts and Family Safety category link.

On the User Accounts and Family Safety screen, under User Accounts, click the Change your Windows password link.

On the User Accounts screen, click the Change your password link.

On the Change your password screen, the user can enter the current password in the first edit box, and then enter a new password in each of the next two edit boxes. The user can even click the Change password button.

However, at this point, the user will see the following dialog box display and they are not allowed to change the password.

To cancel the process of changing the password, click Cancel on the Change your password screen.

To close the Control Panel, click the X button in the upper, right corner of the dialog box.

You might think that the user can open the Local Users and Groups dialog box and turn off the User cannot change password option. They can do this, but when they try to apply the change, the following dialog box displays, telling the user that access is denied.

The User cannot change password option is only applicable to Standard user accounts. You can select the option for users in the Administrators group, but the option has no affect.

Turning on the User cannot change password option in a user’s account, also prevents that user from removing their password.