What does NTSTATUS 0xC000025C (STATUS_PWD_HISTORY_CONFLICT) mean?

 
Previous Next
STATUS_PWD_TOO_RECENT STATUS_PLUGPLAY_NO_DEVICE

STATUS_PWD_HISTORY_CONFLICT

Password history is a remembered-value check and must be diagnosed separately from length or age

STATUS_PWD_HISTORY_CONFLICT identifies reuse of a password that the account policy still remembers. Windows exposes Enforce password history as a policy setting, and fine-grained password policies can set a history count for selected users or global security groups. The failure is therefore more specific than STATUS_PASSWORD_RESTRICTION.

Check the resultant policy and history count; do not ask the user to reveal previous passwords so an administrator can compare them manually. The password authority performs the comparison using its stored password-history representation. Minimum password age matters too, because setting it to zero can let users rapidly change passwords enough times to cycle back to a preferred value when the history depth is finite.

For migration or synchronization systems, record only status, account, policy source, and transaction identifiers. A connector that replays an old password after rollback can repeatedly hit this status even when the interactive password tool behaves correctly. Repair the state machine or choose a new compliant value instead of clearing domain password history as a broad workaround.

What to inspect

  • The effective password-history count and minimum password age for the specific account.
  • Whether the value came from an interactive user change, password synchronization, rollback, or credential-rotation system.
  • Repeated transaction IDs or retry sequences showing an automation system resubmitting a previously used secret.

References


Looking for a different code? Search another status or error code.