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Oct 15, 2018 How to Specify a Maximum and Minimum PIN Length in Windows 10 Information Windows Hello in Windows 10 enables users to sign in to their d. Specify Maximum and Minimum PIN Length in Windows 10. Maximum PIN length configures the maximum number of characters allowed for the PIN. I’ve for long been an advocate of using long passwords, using entire phrases/sentences instead of a single more complex but short password. Some Windows Server 2003 documentation states the maximum password length is 28 characters (e.g. Enforcing Strong Password Usage.

Applies to

Windows 10

Describes the best practices, location, values, policy management, and security considerations for the Minimum password length security policy setting.

Reference

The Minimum password length policy setting determines the least number of characters that can make up a password for a user account. You can set a value of between 1 and 14 characters, or you can establish that no password is required by setting the number of characters to 0.

Possible values

User-specified number of characters between 0 and 14
Not defined

Best practices

Set Minimum password length to at least a value of 8. If the number of characters is set to 0, no password is required. In most environments, an eight-character password is recommended because it is long enough to provide adequate security and still short enough for users to easily remember. This value will help provide adequate defense against a brute force attack. Adding complexity requirements will help reduce the possibility of a dictionary attack. For more info, see Password must meet complexity requirements.

Permitting short passwords reduces security because short passwords can be easily broken with tools that perform dictionary or brute force attacks against the passwords. Requiring very long passwords can result in mistyped passwords that might cause an account lockout and subsequently increase the volume of Help Desk calls.

In addition, requiring extremely long passwords can actually decrease the security of an organization because users might be more likely to write down their passwords to avoid forgetting them. However, if users are taught that they can use passphrases (sentences such as 'I want to drink a $5 milkshake'), they should be much more likely to remember.

Location

Computer ConfigurationWindows SettingsSecurity SettingsAccount PoliciesPassword Policy

Default values

The following table lists the actual and effective default policy values. Default values are also listed on the policy’s property page.

Server type or Group Policy Object (GPO)	Default value
Default domain policy	7 characters
Default domain controller policy	Not defined
Stand-alone server default settings	0 characters
Domain controller effective default settings	7 characters
Member server effective default settings	7 characters
Effective GPO default settings on client computers	0 characters

Policy management

This section describes features, tools, and guidance to help you manage this policy.

Restart requirement

None. Changes to this policy become effective without a device restart when they are saved locally or distributed through Group Policy.

Security considerations

Active Directory Maximum Password Length

This section describes how an attacker might exploit a feature or its configuration, how to implement the countermeasure, and the possible negative consequences of countermeasure implementation.

Vulnerability

Types of password attacks include dictionary attacks (which attempt to use common words and phrases) and brute force attacks (which try every possible combination of characters). Also, attackers sometimes try to obtain the account database so they can use tools to discover the accounts and passwords.

Countermeasure

Configure the **** policy setting to a value of 8 or more. If the number of characters is set to 0, no password will be required.

In most environments, we recommend an eight-character password because it is long enough to provide adequate security, but not too difficult for users to easily remember. This configuration provides adequate defense against a brute force attack. Using the Password must meet complexity requirements policy setting in addition to the Minimum password length setting helps reduce the possibility of a dictionary attack.

Note: Some jurisdictions have established legal requirements for password length as part of establishing security regulations.

Potential impact

Requirements for extremely long passwords can actually decrease the security of an organization because users might leave the information in an unsecured location or lose it. If very long passwords are required, mistyped passwords could cause account lockouts and increase the volume of Help Desk calls. If your organization has issues with forgotten passwords due to password length requirements, consider teaching your users about passphrases, which are often easier to remember and, due to the larger number of character combinations, much harder to discover.

Maximum length of password in Windows 10

Older Operating Systems prior to Windows XP

While the article is focused on Windows 10, I would like to take a minute to talk about the previous operating systems. These operating systems – MS DOS, Windows 95 and Windows 98 – were created in an era when security was not taken so seriously as it is taken today. Threats and times were different then! It was only with Windows NT, did things change.

Coming to password, in older operating systems, it depended on the programs you were running. Login passwords could not handle more than 14 characters. These too had some limitations. They wouldn’t accept white spaces like space character or a tab character. Some other special characters were also forbidden. But you could still create passwords that were strong – using a combination of lower and upper case alphabets, numbers and certain special characters.

If you still use Windows 98 or prior operating systems for some reason, it is better to keep the passwords limited to 14 characters. In case you have a network where you have modern operating systems along with the older ones, the Server passwords better be less than or equal to 14 characters, or you may face problems logging into those systems.

Max password length in Windows 10, Server 2003 & other modern operating systems

Internally, Windows represents passwords in 256-character UNICODE strings. The logon dialog is limited to 127 characters, however. Therefore, the longest password that can be used to log on interactively to a computer running Windows is 127 characters. Theoretically, programs such as services can use longer passwords, but they must be set programmatically because the password change dialog will not allow a password longer than 127 characters, says an article about Passwords FAQ on TechNet.

Technically, the length of passwords can be a maximum of 127 characters according to Microsoft. 127 characters mean that you can create easy phrases that you can easily remember and yet are strong passwords. However, some other considerations associated with these operating systems make you use shorter passwords.

For example, if you use a Microsoft Account to log into your Windows 10 computer, you are not allowed 127 characters. This is because Microsoft accounts (Live, Outlook, Hotmail etc) have a maximum limit of 16 characters only. Thus, even though the login box of Windows 10 allows 127 characters, you are forced to use a password of maximum 16 characters. Yahoo and Google are better in this case that allow 32 and 200 characters respectively.

When you sign in to your Microsoft account with a long password, you might see the following error message:

Microsoft account passwords can contain up to 16 characters. If you’ve been using a password that has more than 16 characters, enter the first 16.

This doesn’t mean that your password has been shortened. Windows Live ID passwords were always limited to 16 characters and any additional password characters were ignored by the sign-in process. When Microsoft changed “Windows Live ID” to “Microsoft account,” they also updated the sign-in page to let you know that only the first 16 characters of your password are necessary. To avoid this error message in the future, you only need to enter the first 16 characters of your password, says Microsoft.

The minimum number of characters used in Windows login and Microsoft Accounts is 8 characters and you can include all types of special characters (except the white space characters such as space and tabs etc). You can also use ALT+Numpad to create special characters and Windows 10 will happily accept that.

Login Dialog and Reset Password Dialogs

The login and reset password dialogs use “Windows elements” such as text boxes or combo boxes that can display only 32 characters at a time. But since the technical limit is 127 characters, you can continue to type the passwords even if you reach the max 32 characters’ limit of text and combo boxes. The text box will not display only the last 32 characters but you can be assured that all of the 127 characters have been logged by the login dialog and password reset dialogs. They will simply remove the initial characters and you may feel that the password is truncated to the last 32 characters but that is not the case. As mentioned earlier, all the 127 characters are accepted though not displayed in the text box owing to their limitations.

Imposing restrictions on Passwords

Talking of passwords, it becomes necessary to imposing restrictions on password policies that hardens Windows login policy and makes users create strong passwords. You can use Group Policy Editor or command prompt to force restrictions on password – such as imposing minimum and maximum length of passwords, force usage of special characters, expiry of passwords and more.

Conclusion

Maximum Password Length

To sum up what is the maximum password length in Windows 10 –

The minimum length is 8 characters and the maximum is 127 characters for a Local Account
If you use Microsoft Account to log into your Windows 10 machine, you cannot use more than 16 characters
If you are using operating systems older than NT, limit the passwords to 14 characters else you’d face login problems.