Login failed for user '(null)'. Active Directory?

  • Here is the situation...

    I have numerous SQL Servers. All SQL2K w/SP2 and security patches. All report the same version number. All are set to use mixed mode security, although all our applications/users connect using NT authentication. All our servers reside in the same domain as do the users.

    Our client machines are a mix of WIN2K and NT4. Our apps connect using either ADO, OLEDB, or ODBC. The servers are setup to listen on TCP, Shared Memory, and Named Pipes. Workstations are setup to communicate on TCP and NP.

    Our primary production database server is NT4. We are looking to upgrade it to WIN2K. In order to do this, I must "failover" to the backup system during the upgrade (our business is 24/7). The backup system, being a mirror, is also NT4. When trying to failover this weekend, we got the:

    Login failed for user '(null)'. Reason: Not associated with a trusted SQL Server connection

    ...error message from the apps while trying to connect to the backup system. The exact same apps work fine against production or any of our other systems. Meanwhile, I am able to connect to the backup server from Query Analyzer and EM with no problems.

    Other things to note...

    * The error seems to only occur when connecting from Win2K workstations. And some Win2K workstations also get the error under EM and QA.

    * We are in the middle of a transition from NT4 to Win2K domain controllers. Could this be impacting our authentication?

    * The backup server was recently a Win2K machine that was later downgraded to NT4. Could that be causing an issue somewhere?

    I believe this problem to actually be outside of SQL Server itself, but it doesn't make it any less my problem nonetheless.

    Thoughts?



    Brian Glass
    Sr. Database Adminstrator
    Bombardier Aerospace

  • This was removed by the editor as SPAM

  • This is an issue with the token and credentials being sent by the client to the server. It appears (from what I've seen and dug into) to be related to Active Directory. I had one server that kept giving me this and after trying numerous things, I gave up. Sometime later it started to work with native connections again.

    I'd call PSS on this one, especially in a mixed mode domain.

    Steve Jones

    sjones@sqlservercentral.com

    http://qa.sqlservercentral.com/columnists/sjones

    The Best of SQL Server Central.com 2002 - http://qa.sqlservercentral.com/bestof/

    http://www.dkranch.net

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