Preboot password needs updating (Notification in Windows above the McAfee icon)

Technical Articles ID: KB84146
Last Modified: 2023-04-11 08:58:24 Etc/GMT

Environment

Drive Encryption (DE) 7.1.3 and later

For details of DE 7.1.x supported environments, see KB79422 - Supported platforms for Drive Encryption 7.x.

Summary

A new feature has been introduced in DE 7.1.3. This feature checks to see whether logged-in users have changed their password in Active Directory (AD), but haven't updated their DE password to match it. If there's a difference in the passwords, DE shows a balloon notification informing them to lock their screen. When a user unlocks the screen, DE intercepts the user's AD password, and updates the DE password to match it. However, conditions can occur where this fails, which is what this article covers.

Problem

You repeatedly see the following notification in the Windows system tray above the McAfee icon:

Preboot password needs updating

Your Preboot password needs updating to match your
domain password. Please lock (CTRL+L) and unlock your
screen now to synchronize your credentials.

Cause

The user will continue to repeatedly see the balloon notification because DE will refuse to update the DE password if DE has stricter password complexity rules (including password history and simple words) than the equivalent policies provided by AD.

Solution

Perform one of the following actions to resolve the mismatched password issue:

Update AD Group Policy Object (GPO) password complexity options to match those of the DE User Based Policy (UBP).
Update the DE UBP options to match the AD GPO password complexity options.
Enable the new DE 7.1.3 product policy option Ignore Drive Encryption password rules and history when changing the Windows password.
For details on changing policy options, refer to the Drive Encryption 7.1.3 Product Guide (PD24867).

For product documents, go to the Product Documentation portal.

Affected Products

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Preboot password needs updating (Notification in Windows above the McAfee icon)

Environment

Summary

Problem

Cause

Solution

Affected Products

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Title

Knowledge Center

Preboot password needs updating (Notification in Windows above the McAfee icon)

Environment

Summary

Problem

Cause

Solution

Affected Products

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