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ERROR_ILL_FORMED_PASSWORD
The new password failed structural validation before normal policy acceptance
ERROR_ILL_FORMED_PASSWORD is distinct from the broad policy result ERROR_PASSWORD_RESTRICTION. The latter covers length, complexity and history requirements documented by Windows password policy. An ill-formed value instead indicates that the password data itself contains values the password operation will not accept, so simply making the string longer or adding character classes is not a reliable fix.
Inspect the exact Unicode value at the account API boundary and the conversion performed by the client. Legacy OEM or LM-compatible password paths are especially important because they have different representations from modern Unicode password-change methods. Do not log the password itself; record the API, encoding path, lengths and status returned by the account authority.
What to inspect
- Identify whether the client used Unicode SAMR/NetAPI or a legacy OEM-compatible path.
- Check for truncation, embedded data, or application-side encoding conversion without recording the secret.
- Do not misdiagnose the result as a complexity-policy failure unless the server returns the policy status.
References
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