Is there a limit to numbers of Windows accounts?

Where did you learnt this loop command?

Muz said:

Where did you learnt this loop command?

I have been writing DOS batch command files since the days of MS DOS 3.2 so it was easy for me to make up a quick and dirty one. The GOTO statement and the :Label make such loops possible. The NET USER /ADD command requires this batch file to be run as an administrator.

A more elegant loop would include an IF statement to check if a maximum count had been reached and exit if it had. As it stands the loop would run forever until I used Ctrl-C to end it or (in this case) until it fell over (presumably because of a lack of system resources).

Bree said:

Well, there's nothing like a practical experiment. I've set up a VM with a batch file to create accounts and increment a counter. So far it has created over 9,000 accounts (and is still running)...

Attachment 270912

Edit: now 12,000 new accounts, and counting....

2nd edit: at 16,266 accounts created the script ran into a brick wall and stopped. I restarted the script and it made a few more accounts, but very slowly. On restarting I longer get a user name or password prompt on the sign in screen, not even in Safe Mode. I think I've broken the system. Good job it's just a VM.

Yeah I think MS broke that new servers. I was about to create 60,000 local accounts on 2012 R2 and still have it reboot and work without any issues. But with 2016, 2019, and 2022 it refused to get to the login screen and crapped out.