How to Make a Windows 7 User Account Capable of Logging on from a Computer Having Other Vendor’s Operating System?

In Windows platform by default user accounts and their passwords are stored in Security Accounts Manager (SAM) file and are stored in encrypted form. Encryption algorithm of Microsoft Windows is quite strong and is not easily breakable. However in scenarios where network consists of multivendor operating systems example Sun Solaris Linux Novell NetWare etc. administrators may want users of Windows platform to be able to log on from any computer with any operating system installed on it. This is only possible when the algorithm which is used to encrypt user accounts and passwords is either understood by other vendors’ operating systems or is weak enough so that it can easily be reversed. On Microsoft Windows platform administrators can configure group policy settings to store the passwords of user accounts with reversible encryption so that other vendors’ operating systems can easily decrypt the passwords and can authenticate users to log on using those computers. If you are an administrator you can configure the above settings by following the steps below:

1. Logon to the computer with administrator account.
2. Click on Start button.
3. At the bottom of start menu in search box type gpedit.msc command and press enter key.
4. On Local Group Policy Editor snap-in under Computer Configuration expand Windows Settings and then expand Security Settings.
5. From the opened list expand Account Policies and from the list click on Password Policies.
6. From the right pane double click on Store password using reversible encryption and from the opened box in select Enabled radio button.
7. 
8. Click on Ok button to accept and confirm your configuration and close Local Group Policy Editor snap-in.
9. Open Command Prompt and in command window type gpupdate /force to update here computer policy with latest configuration.
10. Close Command Prompt.