Windows Active Directory step by step (6) ------ objectClass: computer

In the last post, we played with the objectClass: User. This post will continue to play with the other equally important objectClass, "Computer".

You may not have noticed that every domain computer has its own account just like every user has a user account.

1. Definition of "Computer" class

An interesting thing we can find is that the "Computer" class is a subclass of  "User".



Unlike a user, a computer account's password is managed by AD directly. Actually, AD changes a computer account's password every 30 days. The computer saves a copy of the password locally. For some reasons, the local copy of the password may be out of sync to the one save in AD server. Then you have to rejoin the computer to the domain to get the new password.

2. Important attributes of Computer class

Since "Computer" class inherits "User" class, it has all the attributes of a "User", like unicodePwd. Besides the inherited attributes, 'Computer' class owns some import attributes:

• operatingSystem
• operatingSystemVersion
• networkAddress

3. Example of a Computer object