Policy
Contact PDC on logon failure
Microsoft Windows
Policy overview
Key metadata and intent for this policy.
Supported OS tags: Windows10, Windows10RT, Windows11, Windows7, Windows8, Windows81, WindowsRT, WindowsRT81, WindowsServer2003, WindowsServer2008, WindowsServer2012, WindowsServer2012R2, WindowsServer2016, WindowsVista, WindowsXP
This policy setting defines whether a domain controller (DC) should attempt to verify the password provided by a client with the PDC emulator if the DC failed to validate the password. Contacting the PDC emulator is useful in case the client’s password was recently changed and did not propagate to the DC yet. Users may want to disable this feature if the PDC emulator is located over a slow WAN connection. If you enable this policy setting, the DCs to which this policy setting applies will attempt to verify a password with the PDC emulator if the DC fails to validate the password. If you disable this policy setting, the DCs will not attempt to verify any passwords with the PDC emulator. If you do not configure this policy setting, it is not applied to any DCs.
Registry values
How enabled and disabled states update the registry.
| Scope | Registry location | Type | Enabled value | Disabled value | Copy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Computer | Path Software\Policies\Microsoft\Netlogon\Parameters Value name AvoidPdcOnWan | REG_DWORD | HKLM 0 | HKLM 1 |
Policy elements
Inputs and configuration options exposed by this policy.
This policy has no additional user input fields.