Force Password Check With PDC When Login Failure Occurs

I didn’t even know this setting existed as an option within Group Policy, but then again, Group Policy is a bit of a beast at the best of times.

So, the PDC emulator is responsible in the domain for handling password replication to other domain controllers, a password change occurs on the PDC and this is then replicated out to all other domian controllers. But what if you have a large infrastructure and the password change hasn’t replicated out yet to the domain controller being used by a client to authenticate? Well there’s a policy setting you can apply to your domain controllers, that forces them to check with the PDC in the event they deny a logon request due to a bad password. The setting is called “Contact PDC on logon failure” and it is briefly detailed on TechNet, and within the Group Policy editor, lives at the below location;

Computer Configuration\Policies\Administrative Templates\System\NetLogon

Use with caution though, if used on domain controllers on slow WAN links, this will create a lot of traffic to the PDC, and in general it can create a lot of load on the PDC in large environments.

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