How do I write a script to modify the password expiration values for users on a Windows Server?

Question

I need to create several users on Windows 2008 servers and modify the password expiration value to "Never". These will be local (not AD) users. I can create them using "net user", it's modifying the pass expiry that is killing me. If I do a "net user username" it lists the field and its value, but there is no switch (at least not one that the help file references) to modify it, and most of the solutions I saw online suggested installing 3rd party tools, however this solution must be native to Windows (ideally using Powershell). Any help is appreciated.

UPDATE

I said if I figured out how to do this in Powershell I would post it here, and I am a man of my word.

Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_UserAccount -Filter "name = 'steve'" | Set-WmiInstance -Argument @{PasswordExpires = 0}

This is a boolean value so if you wanted to set a password to expire just change 0 to 1. This is beautiful to me in its simplicity, and I have tested this method updating other WMI objects and it works every time.

Answer 1

The simple solution is to create a batch file that issues the following command:

net accounts /maxpwage:unlimited

However, that will set the maximum password age for all accounts on the local machine to unlimited, not just the new accounts that you have created.

If you need a finer level of control (i.e., the ability to set the password expiration values for individual users), you'll need something a little more complicated. The Scripting Guys share an example of a VBScript that will modify a local user account so that its password never expires:

Const ADS_UF_DONT_EXPIRE_PASSWD = &h10000 

strDomainOrWorkgroup = "Fabrikam" 
strComputer = "atl-win2k-01" 
strUser = "KenMeyer" 

Set objUser = GetObject("WinNT://" & strDomainOrWorkgroup & "/" & _ 
    strComputer & "/" & strUser & ",User") 

objUserFlags = objUser.Get("UserFlags") 
objPasswordExpirationFlag = objUserFlags OR ADS_UF_DONT_EXPIRE_PASSWD 
objUser.Put "userFlags", objPasswordExpirationFlag  
objUser.SetInfo 

It would be easy to modify this to work for any user of your choice, or even to create a new user.

Finally, here's an example in C#, which you should be able to port to PowerShell. I'm not much of a PS expert, but considering it uses the .NET Framework, the above code should give you some ideas.