When you view the application log on a server that is running Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2003, the following event may be logged every hour:

Event Source: Live Communications Ser
Event Category (1001)
Event ID: 12295
Date: date
Time: time
Type: Error
User: N/A
Computer: servername
Description: AD operation failed while verifying validity of service account password.

This issue occurs if you have defined the Maximum password age password policy in your domain so that passwords do not expire. This issue occurs when Live Communications Server 2003 tries to retrieve the password expiration time for the service account that it runs under. Live Communications Server performs this operation every hour to generate an event to warn an administrator if the password for the service account that it runs under is scheduled to expire. However, if the password policy in the domain stops passwords from expiring, the error event that is described in the "Symptoms" section is generated.

To work around this issue, define a maximum password age in your domain by using Group Policy. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Log on to a domain controller, and then start the Active Directory Users and Computers snap-in.
2. Right-click your domain, and then click Properties.
3. Click the Group Policy tab, click Default Domain Policy (or click another policy where you have defined your password policy), and then click Edit.
4. Expand Computer Configuration, expand Windows Settings, expand Security Settings, expand Account Policies, and then click Password Policy.
5. In the right pane, double-click Maximum password age.
6. In the Password will not expire box, type the number of days that you want the password to expire in.
   
   Note When you type a number other than 0 (zero) in this box, the name of the box changes to Password will expire in.
7. Click Apply, and then click OK.
8. Close the Group Policy Object Editor, and then click OK to close the example.com Properties dialog box (where example.com is the name of your domain).
9. Permit sufficient time for Group Policy changes to replicate throughout the domain and for Group Policy to be updated on your domain controllers and on your member servers.