How to change password over Remote Desktop Connection over Remote Desktop Connection?

Question

We all know the official, documented, and supported way to "change" your password is to press:

• Ctrl + Alt + Del

and then select Change Password.

Except that doesn't work if you are connected to a machine over remote desktop.

Attempt #2 - Ctrl+Alt+End

We all know the official, documented, and supported way to "change" your password on a remote computer is to press:

• Ctrl + Alt + End

This hotkey combination is sent by the Remote Desktop Client to the server as Ctrl+Alt+Del, causing the option Change Password to appear.

But if you are connected to an RDP session, which is connected to an RDP session, then you cannot use CAD or CAE; because neither reach the final final final computer.

Attempt #3 - On-screen keyboard

Some people suggest a workaround here is to use the on-screen keyboard inside the RDP window inside the RDP window, and then press Ctrl + Alt + Delete on the on-screen keybaord.

Except we all know that doesn't work:

Attempt #4 - Change account settings

And the final insult is if you try to go to your account to "change" your password, and it tells you the most unhelpful thing:

How do you change your password on a machine that you are connected to through 2, 3, 4, or more levels of RDP indirection?

Attempt #5 - More attempts at using the on-screen keyboard

• Machine 0: RDP into machine 1.
• Machine 1: RDP into machine 2.
• Machine 2: Open the On-Screen Keyboard.
• Machine 2: RDP into machine 3. Un-fullscreen the RDP session.
• Machine 2: Use the OSK to press Ctrl-Alt-End.

Does nothing.

Attempt #6 - pspasswd

This does not change my password; it resets it.

Attempt #7 - More attempts at "Change account settings"

Doesn't work because there is no option to change your password:

Attempt #8 - net user

This does not change my password; it resets it.

Bonus Chatter

I say "change" your password (in quotes), as to distingush it from "resetting" your password.

• the former changes your password
• the latter causes you to lose access to all your certificate private keys, saved passwords, etc

Because you "reset" your old password rather than "change" it, and those private things are encrypted (essentially) with your password.

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How do you access the Windows Change password user interface over remote desktop, over remote desktop, over remote desktop?

Regarding 3rd party applications: Corporate policies and security people lose their minds when i instal 3rd party software on the internal servers. I have no problem telling them where to go. But any answer should probably be suitable for the people who are afraid of telling security people, auditors, and governments where to go.

Answer 1

I was having the same issue but I am on the Remote Desktop Web Client.

from some Microsoft Documentation I managed to change my password by hitting Ctrl+Alt+End from my physical keyboard that triggers Ctrl+Alt+Del on the remote session, perhaps some variation of this via being triggered from inside the first remote to the second remote triggers this.

Answer 2

This answer has 17 upvotes in a separate superuser thread. Hope it works for you:

STICKY KEYS IS THE ANSWER

There is another way which will work regardless of OS and as many nested RDC sessions as you can wrap your head round. With the focus in the inner most RDC session, quickly press the shift key 5 times. This will bring up the Sticky Keys window, and one window for each level of nesting. When prompted to turn on sticky keys, click Yes/Ok for your most nested session, and No/Cancel for the outer sessions. Now with the focus still on the inner most nested session, press ctrl (then let go), press alt (then let go), press delete.

Tadah!

To turn off sticky keys, with the focus on the nested session, press shift 6 times and click No/Cancel.

Answer 3

Press ctrl+alt on the physical keyboard followed by del on the on screen keyboard.

Answer 4

A. Try to press the start button > tap on the user name > settings > change password.

B. Search for "Computer Management" in the start menu and launch it. Then go to "Users Management", right click on your user and then select "Set password".

Edit:

As it would seem, since you are probably not a domain admin, just call tech-support and ask them to reset your password. They can tick "ask for password next login" in Active-Directory, which will make you select a new password for the user account.

I don't understand the problem between reseting and changing your password and have commented about it in response to your message.

Answer 5

For changing the password of a remote network computer, you may use the free PsPasswd.

Example :

pspasswd \\workstation64 jdoe password567

The description of the pspasswd command-line :

Syntax

pspasswd [[\\computer[,computer[,..] | @file 
     [-u user [-p passwd]]] Username [NewPassword]

Options:

computer   The computer on which the user account resides. Default=local system 

-p passwd  Specify a password for user (optional). Passed as clear text.
           If omitted, you will be prompted to enter a hidden password.

-u user    Specify a user name for login to remote computer(optional).

@file      Execute the command on each of the computers listed in the file.

Username   Name of account for password change.

NewPassword  The new password, If ommitted a NULL password is applied.

-accepteula Suppress the display of the license dialog.

Related command for use on the local computer is net user, whose syntax is one of the following:

net user [<UserName> {<Password> | *} [<Options>]] [/domain]
net user [<UserName> {<Password> | *} /add [<Options>] [/domain]]
net user [<UserName> [/delete] [/domain]]

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Since there seems some disagreement on whether PsPasswd changes or resets the password, although when Mark Russinovich says "change an account password" I do tend to accept his words as-is, I did find a commercial product that is explicitly said to change the password.

The product is Password Assistant, part of the EventSentry suite of utilities. It's unclear whether this product is free if used alone or priced at $98.00 per Windows device (if it requires buying the entire suite).

In a review at FREE: Password Assistant – Change the local administrator password on multiple computers, where the author discusses the difference between Password Assistant and a previous product that he reviewed, he says:

A while back I discussed the similar tool NetWrix Bulk Password Reset. The main difference between Password Assistant and the NetWrix tool is that with the latter, you reset the password, whereas with the Password Assistant you change the password. "Resetting" means that you don't have to know the current password, whereas to "change" the password you have to specify the old password. Changing the password is usually the preferable method because, if you reset the password, the user might lose data such as EFS encrypted files or stored Internet Explorer credentials.

Answer 6

This is a long shot - do you have the option to download TeamViewer on both machines? This will give you the command to run Ctrl Alt Del on the end machine.

I appreciate it doesn't resolve resetting via RDP but you have tried all of the answers I could come up with so this ones more a workaround suggestion.

Answer 7

I can't remember exactly where I found this before, but this works for me when using an alternative RDP client (Remmina, where I can't enter Ctrl+Alt+End) to access Windows 10 from Linux.

C:\Windows\explorer.exe shell:::{2559a1f2-21d7-11d4-bdaf-00c04f60b9f0}