How to Enforce Password History in Group Policy Editor
Computer administrators can use the Group Policy Editor to deploy all types of general policy settings. When the "Enforce password history" policy setting is enabled, Windows keeps a record of a specified number of prior user account passwords. When users change their account password, they are prohibited from re-using any of the passwords still in the Windows memory. This policy helps to enhance computer security. By default, the "Enforce password history" policy is set to "0," which means no prior passwords are remembered. To enable the "Enforce password history" policy, the setting has to be a value greater than 0.
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Instructions
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Using the Local Group Policy Editor
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1
Open the "Start" menu. Type "gpedit.msc" in the "Search" box. Click "gpedit" in the search results.
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2
Click the arrow next to "Computer Configuration" in the left-side panel to expand this branch of the console tree. Expand the "Windows Settings" branch. Expand the "Security Settings" branch. Expand the "Account Policies" branch. Click directly on the "Password Policy" folder in the left-side window panel.
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3
Double-click the "Enforce password history" policy in the right-side window panel.
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4
Enter the number of passwords the group policy should be set to remember. The maximum possible value is 24. The number entered represents not only how many prior user account passwords are remembered, but how many new unique passwords must be created for a user account before an old password can be used again.
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5
Click "OK" to deploy the policy. Close the Local Group Policy editor.
Using the Local Security Policy Editor
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6
Open the "Start" menu. Type "Local Security Policy" or "secpol.msc" in the "Search" box. Press "Enter" to launch the Local Security Settings editor. This is a subset of the more comprehensive Group Policy module.
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Click the arrow next to "Account Policies" in the left-side panel to expand this branch of the console tree. Click directly on the "Password Policy" folder in the left-side window panel.
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8
Double-click the "Enforce password history" policy in the right-side window panel.
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Enter the number of passwords the group policy should be set to remember. The maximum possible value is 24. The number entered represents not only how many prior user account passwords are remembered, but how many new unique passwords must be created for a user account before an old password can be used again.
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10
Click "OK" to deploy the policy. Close the Local Security Policy editor.
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1
References
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