Machine account password expiration

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.win2000.general (More info?)

What happens when a machine account expires?

For instance because someone took a long holiday (>30days) and his computer
was switched of the whole time.

Will the computer still be able to authenticate in AD, or will
authentication fail untill the computers account is reset?

The documentation states (IMHO) the latter.

BUT.... We use the tool 'oldcmp' the remove old computeraccounts from AD.
However there are workstations that have password ages of 100 days and up
that are still used daily. When the account is disabled the users can't logon
anymore untill the account is enabled again. But even then the password age
count isn't reset, so the computeraccount is disabled again the next time the
script runs.

We haven't disabled machine account password changes.

Does anyone have insight in how this can happen?

Regards,

Don