Selenium's Parallel Chrome Instances Can Trigger Windows Account Lockouts

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A developer discovered that running multiple Selenium-controlled Chrome instances in parallel was causing repeated Windows account lockouts, despite the correct password always being used. Chrome contains Windows-specific logic that calls the LogonUser API with an empty password to check authentication state, generating failed login attempts recorded as Event ID 4625 in the Windows Security log. When many ChromeDriver instances are launched simultaneously, each creating a fresh temporary profile, the volume of failed attempts can quickly exceed the Windows account lockout threshold. The root cause was identified by examining the Security event log, which consistently pointed to chrome.exe as the source process. The recommended fix is to assign each Selenium worker a dedicated persistent Chrome profile, which both prevents repeated failed authentication attempts and avoids redundant first-run initialization overhead.

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ProgrammingDEV Community ·

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ProgrammingDEV Community ·

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ProgrammingDEV Community ·

Five Checks to Run Before Restarting a Failing Kubernetes Pod

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