Changing SharePoint Account's Password on Client OS

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As promised, I will show you how to refresh your SharePoint account on a client OS (Windows 7) after you changed its password.

On my Windows 7 laptop, I use my corporate domain user (you have to use a domain account for a full version of SharePoint) as SharePoint 2010's service account (for how to install a full SharePoint 2010 to Windows 7, please check my other post at: https://blogs.msdn.com/b/zwsong/archive/2010/04/29/installing-complete-version-of-sharepoint-server-2010-on-windows-7.aspx), and it can't be managed by SharePoint itself. So after I changed my domain account's password, my SharePoint farm stopped working. I see a 503 error when I try to visit the CA site:

Service Unavailable

HTTP Error 503. The service is unavailable.

There are two sets of accounts you need to refresh:

  • SharePoint Windows Services
  • SharePoint IIS Application Pools

To refresh Windows Services' accounts' passwords, go to your machine's Services Management Console (I always right click Computer and select Manage). Now, navigate to Services under Services and Application. On the right pane, click on its title bar's Log On As to sort the list by account name. I see four SharePoint services under my domain account. Go to each of them and refresh their passwords. The 4 services are:

  • SharePoint 2010 Timer
  • SharePoint 2010 User Code Host
  • SharePoint Server Search 14
  • Web Analytics Service

Now, navigate to IIS Manager, and click on Application Pools. On your application pools list, click on Identity to sort it by account name. You have to refresh passwords for all the application pools using your domain accounts.

After all the changes, restart SQL server and IIS, you should have your SharePoint 2010 farm back.

Zewei Song, Ph.D.
MCPD, MCTS: .NET 3.5, MOSS AppDev, Configuration
Enterprise Services, Microsoft Corporation