This is a major issue many companies face: 1st thing I would ask is: Is your company bound by any regulatory compliance specifications? If so less complex passwords may violate that. 2nd- your execs need to secure their data and less complex passwords put that more at risk- but so does a very difficult password that they end up writing down. I would work with your execs and the exec assistants to understand how to meet a strong password that is easy to remember- here are a few examples: 3Golfpro$ -- this has the length- the number, special characters and upper and lower case. As far as Fine-Grained password policies- it is very important to note that this is only available when the domain is running in W2k8 native mode so all w2k w2k3 domain controllers have to be removed before you can enable that- 2nd- this is something that should be kept under wraps right now as it is hard to audit and can be a pain to setup. In the real world what I would recommend for your execs - new laptops with fingerprint readers built in- this works great for their own PC- also- if a new machine is not in the budget or they have a desktop or a 2nd machine at home- the usb connected USB fingerprint readers work great. And- for all you admins working with vista and user account control- finger print readers are great as your user account can be your index finger and your administrator account can be your middle finger- it works like a champ- if you haven't tried it-pay the 40 bucks and get one to try it out. My 2 cents hope it helps some, omar From: gptalk-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:gptalk-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of mike kline Sent: Friday, January 11, 2008 4:58 PM To: gptalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [gptalk] Re: Difficulty applying policies Password policies for domain accounts can't be set at the OU level. That policy is set at the domain level so your domain level policy is still being used. There are some third party tools that may help you out if you want a different policy. Windows 2008 will allow you to use fine-grained passwords so Microsoft did listen that we wanted this feature. More info on that here: http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/library/2199dcf7-68fd-4315-87cc-ade35f8978ea1033.mspx?mfr=true On Jan 11, 2008 7:37 PM, Paul Manley <paul.manley@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:paul.manley@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote: Simplified Scenario: Executives can't remember their difficult passwords. So we are going to let them use smaller non-complex passwords. Let us assume that this morning I setup Active Directory on a Windows 2003 server with SP1, but no other updates and created a few users. I've installed the Group Policy Management snap-in and created a new Group Policy Object ( under the Group Policy Objects folder of our domain ) called "Exec Password Policy". I've set the [Computer Configuration]->[Windows Settings]->[Security Settings]->[Account Policies]->[Password Policies] to be less restrictive in "Exec Password Policy". I create a new Organizational Unit called "Executives" and place the users in there. Now I "Link an Existing GPO..." on my "Executives" OU selecting the "Executive Password Policy". I try to reset one of the Executives passwords, but I am not allowed: "Windows cannot complete the password change for Fred Executive because: The password does not meet the password policy requirements. Check the minimum password length, password complexity and password history requirements." Those are exactly what I have just turned off. Perhaps you could point out the error of my configuration. I have setup a VM domain this morning to do testing. - Paul -