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How can I remove a Windows credential that doesn't appear in Credential Manager?

Anonymous
2025-02-05T21:48:51+00:00

I built a computer for a user and used my desktop admin credentials at some point to access resources on a server while on the user's profile. Months later I changed my desktop admin password and now my Security team is getting alerts that my desktop admin account is locked out because this user's machine is trying to authenticate with the old password and failing.

I found the event in the user's Event Viewer log that specifically says "The password stored in Credential Manager is invalid...To resolve this error, open Credential Manager in Control Panel, and reenter the password for the credential...."

which is my desktop admin credential.

I'm logged in as the user and under Windows Credentials, there is nothing there. It says "No Windows Credentials"

There are no Certificate-Based Credentials, no Web Credentials. There are a few Generic Credentials for Adobe and WDAGUtilityAccount. That is it.

I'm currently researching how to find hidden or corrupt or credentials stored somewhere else.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Windows for home | Windows 11 | Accounts, profiles, and login

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  1. Anonymous
    2025-04-09T13:48:28+00:00

    I have the same issue but from a different start point.

    On or about 30 December 2024, Windows prompted me to change my password. I did, and things worked fine for four or five days (I worked over the New Year holiday). Then I suddenly started getting locked out of my account. I was on Windows 10 Enterprise.

    Looking at Event Viewer gave me the same error EmanAguirre has, but I cannot find the offending credential for which I have to change the password. My IT staff have since migrated me to Windows 11 in an attempt to solve the problem, but that didn't help. The IT guy working the issue determined that the password comes up when the machine reboots, but I don't have to be logged in for the computer to cause the error.

    Anything you can point me at that could solve the issue? Because my IT folks are telling me their next step is to re-image the computer, which concerns me because I'll have to reload a bunch of non-standard software on it. I also find that re-imaged computers never seem to work well.

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  2. Anonymous
    2025-03-18T15:16:46+00:00

    Sorry for the delay. Thank you for your response.

    I opened this tool you mentioned and it showed me exactly what is in Credential Manager, which is the problem.

    The registry error says:

    "The password stored in Credential Manager is invalid. This might be caused by the logged on user changing the password from a different computer. To resolve this error, open Credentials Manager in Control Panel, and reenter the password for the credential MYDOMAIN\adminEA."

    It's almost like it deleted from the UI of Credential Manager but not the backend? Or somewhere in the registry?

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  3. Francisco Montilla 30,620 Reputation points Independent Advisor
    2025-02-05T23:45:33+00:00

    Hello,

    I’m an Independent Advisor and I'm happy to help you.

    One possible solution is to open the legacy Credentials UI so you can remove the hidden credentials. Please follow these steps:

    • Press Windows + R on your keyboard to open the Run dialog box.
    • Type " rundll32.exe keymgr.dll,KRShowKeyMgr " and press Enter.
    • In the Stored User Names and Passwords window, check if your desktop admin credentials appear, then select and remove them.
    • Restart the computer to ensure changes take effect.

    Let me know if this works! :)

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