Troubleshooter--Disabling the OWA "Change password" Option

To prevent users from changing their password through OWA, you need to edit the registry. Here’s what to do.

Paul Robichaux

December 9, 2001

1 Min Read
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I don't want users to be able to change their password unless they're logged on to the domain. Can I turn off the Change password option in Outlook Web Access (OWA) 2000?

By default, OWA users can't change their passwords unless you specifically enable Web-based password changes (as I described in my Windows 2000 Magazine column Getting Started with Exchange, "Maximize OWA 2000," http://www.winnetmag.com, InstantDoc ID 22253). Unlike earlier OWA versions, OWA 2000 doesn't use Active Server Pages (ASP) scripts. Therefore, to make the Change password button disappear, you must edit the registry instead of just editing out some HTML code from an .asp file. In particular, you need to add the OWA registry subkey to the HKEY_LOCAL_ MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControl SetServicesMSExchangeWEB subkey on each of your OWA servers. Then, add the REG_DWORD value Disable Password to the OWA subkey and give it a value of 1. You must then stop and restart both the Exchange Information Store service and the Microsoft IIS World Wide Web Publishing Service (W3Svc). Because stopping the Information Store service will stop most of the other Exchange services, be sure to restart any services (e.g., POP3 and IMAP4) that you need.

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