Windows Server 2016 VM RDP Users Can't Change Own Password

Question

When pressing Ctrl-Alt-End on our single Azure VM app server via their RDP sessions, my cloud users keep getting the message, "Configuration information could not be read from the domain controller, either because the machine is unavailable, or access is denied". Three people have reported this. My DC (a Windows Server 2019 VM on Azure) is online, so what exactly does this mean? I can RDP into the domain controller just fine, ping, and see files and folders on the DC remotely from the app server. Has anyone else experienced this error in similar circumstances and how did you fix it? There is only one app server and one file server that acts as DC; everything is on the cloud. I've never had this issue until now and folks were previously able to change their passwords fine.

Answer 1

Okay, I have learned what was going on and it was basically user error. My cloud users have a company-provided physical laptop with which they then connect to their cloud virtual machine. The laptop Windows environment is on domain X, whereas the cloud VM is on a separate, isolated cloud domain Y. Even though I suggested that they change their cloud VM Windows user password using Ctrl-Alt-End, they kept using Ctrl-Alt-Del out of habit. The latter key combination (Ctrl-Alt-Del) changes the password on the local laptop environment. When they then presented their domain Y username in the form "Y\username", the laptop Windows environment was in fact processing the password change request and balked because it did not know the "Y" domain controller. Case solved. They just needed to use the right key combination (Ctrl-Alt-End) to change their password when logged into the VM via RDP on the cloud.