Accounts
Why accounts lock out, and how to unlock them safely
Unlocking an account takes seconds. Finding out why it locked is the part that stops the ticket coming back. A lockout is usually a stale credential somewhere repeating a wrong password until the threshold trips.
Common causes
- A phone or tablet still trying an old mail password
- A mapped drive or saved network share using outdated credentials
- A scheduled task or service running as the user
- A second device left signed in after a recent password change
Unlock the account
In Active Directory Users and Computers, open the account, go to the Account tab, and clear the lockout. In PowerShell:
Unlock-ADAccount -Identity jsmithFind the source
Check the security event log on the domain controller for the lockout event and note the source machine. If the same device keeps appearing, that is your culprit. Resolve the stale credential there, not just the symptom.
Confirm and document
Have the user sign in, then record the cause in the ticket. A lockout closed with the reason written down is one you can spot a pattern in later.