Chapter 5. Troubleshooting users and groups
Troubleshooting—every administrator’s favorite activity. It’s late in the afternoon, you want to go home, and the phone rings. It’s the boss. A VIP can’t log on to the network—and it’s your fault (we know you didn’t do it, but administrators are always blamed). How are you going to fix the problem?
That’s where this chapter will help you: by teaching you how to troubleshoot the common AD-related problems for users and groups.
User- and group-related issues usually manifest as the user being unable to log on or access resources such as email, a file share, an application, or a printer. The most common problems are
- The user’s password has expired.
- The user has forgotten the password and it needs resetting.
- The user has locked the account, usually because they used the wrong password too many times.
- The user isn’t a member of the correct group to access the resources.
Have you noticed a pattern emerging? It’s not quite a standard progression but makes a great framework around which to structure your troubleshooting activities. This chapter will walk you through these activities, so that by the end of the chapter you’ll have a solid grasp of these techniques.
Tip
A lot of the problems that the AD administrator needs to resolve are password-related issues.