random neuron misfires

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 at 2:19 am | 28,426 views | trackback url

UPDATED to include Windows 7 information (see below)

Like many other corporate users before me, I’m forced to use “Microsoft Office Communicator” (otherwise known as “MOC” or “OCS”) as my main, internal IM client. My employer used to let us use AIM and other public IM protocols through a proxy, but after the acquisition, all of that flexibility went away… and so did the ability to communicate with my internal and external team.

One of the things that always bothered me about MOC, was that it would present me with the username and password dialog, but no way to save the password. I had to manually enter the username and password each and every time.

Unacceptable!

My machines are all heavily encrypted, so someone breaching my IM password would be small potatoes, once they get past the moat, drawbridge, boiling oil, archers and saw blades of my encryption. I don’t mind having some applications save the password, to make it more convenient for me to use it. MOC is one such app.

Digging around, I realized that this might be due to my machine not being directly joined to the domain, or some other artifact of working “mostly-remotely”. Where did I go next? Yes, straight to the registry… where I found the fix.

To get MOC to prompt you for, and then save your password, launch regedit and locate the following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Communicator

If you don’t see a DWORD key here called “SavePassword“, go ahead and create one. To create the key:

1. Right-click on the right-side and select “New” -> “DWORD Value“.

   

2. Name the key “SavePassword“, and set its value to 1

   

3. Click [Ok] to exit the dialog

If you want that in a .reg style key that you can import directly, cut and paste the following into a file called ‘moc.reg‘, and double-click it in Windows to set this key in the registry:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Communicator]
"SavePassword"=dword:00000001

Here’s what the possible values mean:

Not set = User choice (default).
0 = Users do not have the option to save password, the checkbox isn't even shown.
1 = Users have the option to save password.

This key can also be set under both HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and HKEY_CURRENT_USER, but the policy setting under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE will take precedence if it is set in both places.

Now if you launch MOC, it may prompt you for a password, but you can now click the “Save Password” checkbox to have it save it for you.

Problem solved. Now onto the next yak on my list.

UPDATE: For Windows 7 users using Microsoft Office Communicator (including R2), you’ll find the key stashed in:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Communicator

But this key is WRONG, and will be overwritten with a value of ‘0’ every time you launch MOC, or exit MOC. In order to fix this, you’ll need to create a key called ‘Communicator’, and inside that, a key REG_DWORD value of ‘SavePassword’ with the value of ‘1’.

When you launch Communicator again, you’ll get the “Save Password” checkbox, which you can check and never enter it again (well, until your password changes again of course).

Last Modified: Sunday, March 6th, 2016 @ 02:42

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