CERN Accelerating science

Users are often reporting password changing problems on their PC to the UCO Help Desk. Although not everything is very user friendly, it is now better understood what happens in some cases where user password changes do not seem to work. Here are a few possible scenarios:

• Situation:
  When the user forgets his password he contacts the UCO (Helpdesk@cern.ch, 78888). The person at the Help Desk changes his password, and tell the user that, after a confirmation mail (usually after 20 - 30 minutes time), the user can work with the new password that the UCO provided.

• Scenario 1:
  User changes his password on NT: no problem, change works straight away.

• Scenario 2:
  User changes his password on Windows 95 (W95): this is where most problems arise. These changes are actually queued in a very complex fashion and may sometimes go complicated ways before actually being treated. This may take a rather long time, and confusion starts here:

  While the user thinks his password change must have been processed by the system, in reality it has not (yet). To try it out, the user logs off and back on: the new password is not yet validated by the system, therefore does not work. So the user thinks "I must have made a typo...." - and re-issues the password change request, sometimes even to something else than (s)he typed previously. However, the first request is still queued, and when it gets treated by the system, it comes into effect - and not the one the user typed afterwards.

• Scenario 3:
  Yet again on W95, user changes his password, but leaves the current session logged on. A rather rare case (as we are all curious and want to see if the new password is ok), but this is the solution that should give the least problems. Password change requests should at least have been processed by the time the user logs on the next time, which is usually the next morning.

Conclusion:

Regarding this complex issue of "passwords on NICE" we invite you to have a look at the "PC Tips" given in this CNL regarding the more specific "Windows Password" that also raises some confusion for some users.