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Dean_Gross's avatar
Dean_Gross
Silver Contributor
May 17, 2018

Service Account for AAD Connect Changed after reboot

My customer rebooted his server and the Sync Service won't start, we discovered that service account is showing as Local Admin instead of the expected AAD_mmmmm. Has anyone seen this before, now why ...
Azure Active Directory (AAD)
Mitch King's avatar
Mitch King
Iron Contributor
May 21, 2018

I saw this but on old directory sync, The service account AAD_mmmm is created upon installation and is a domain user so you can reset the password but usually the password is rolled/controlled by AADC....

Repair installation is probably the best way to re-link this but I cant tell you why it happens.

Dean_Gross's avatar
Dean_Gross
Silver Contributor
May 21, 2018

Thanks, after troubleshooting for a few hours without being able to figure out what happened we decided to uninstall and reinstall and that fixed the problem. 

  • Josh Villagomez's avatar
    Josh Villagomez
    Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
    May 21, 2018

    Hello Dean,

     

    Your course of action would have been my recommendation. The AAD_xxxxx account is a local account created by the AAD Connect Wizard. The password is complex and never known. Very strange that it was changed. I usually recommend my customers to create a service account to avoid these scenarios. Then, use the Custom install method and supply your new domain service account. You can also use it to read and/or write to your AD.

    • OrionWithrow's avatar
      OrionWithrow
      Brass Contributor
      May 22, 2018

      I had a very similar scenario after an update of AD Connect was installed. 

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