Reset Expired Domain Administrator Password in Azure DC

Today I had to face this issue of expired Domain Administrator password in a DC hosted in Azure IaaS. This is my SCCM lab environment which has a single DC and completely resides in Azure. The worst thing happened to me was, expired passwords of;

1. Local Admin account which I created at the time of creating the DC VM and also the Domain Admin.
2. Other only Domain Admin account.
3. SCCM Administrator account.

at the same time.

I was able to get a remote connection to DC but could not reset password from there. It just returned  "Your password has expired and must be changed" and nothing happened.

I also tried to use Password Reset feature in Azure to reset local admin password but it didn't work because VM is a DC.

And I got the same error when I tried to create a new user.

Luckily I had another VM (lets say vm AB1) which I was able to login with a domain account. This domain account is also a local admin of the VM.

So this is how I reset the Domain Administrator password.

* Please note that I will not take any responsibility of the steps or tools, commands mentioned below. It is your responsibility to secure your systems and it is your responsibility to work ethically. I hold no liability of the things you do. *

1. As I said I logged in to the vm AB1 with the domain account.

2. I executed "net group" command to check who are the admins of my domain. I have 2 domain admins.

3. I downloaded a tool called changepw from (http://www.joeware.net/freetools/tools/changepw/index.htm) and executed commands for remotely reset domain admin password.

changepw.exe /d:"Domain" /u:"Domain Admin" /p:"New Password" /o:"Old Password"

4. Voila! I was able to log in with the updated password of Domain Admin account.

This is how you update the Domain Admin's password using a normal domain account.