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Unexpected login error. Status 3221225779

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by radintx 3 views

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Here?s one you probably haven?t seen before: I had a user with a Dell Latitude D620 with XP SP2, using Novell 4.91 SP3, and connecting to an Active Directory domain. At the initial Novell login screen, you get error ?Unexpected login error. Status 3221225779? after entering a username and password. Logging in with a local ID on the hard drive worked fine, but I could not login to the domain even with an admin ID. The final solution came down to correcting the date and time on the PC.

A PC user was trying to fix his PC?s time earlier because it was 3 minutes off. He didn?t realize that while fixing the minutes, he changed PM to AM, and changed the date to 1 day ahead. (For some reason this XP SP2 computer did not have the Internet Time tab on the Date and Time Properties to sync the date and time with the Internet.) I had fixed the time 15 minutes into the call, but I just never payed attention to the date.

Apparently if you have a future date and time on your PC, Active Directory or Novell or something will not let you connect. Here was a possible reason from one of my super-tech co-workers:
"The kerberos ticketing system or the secure communications with AD (similar to PKI) may have been affected by the time change. Altering the time can make the PC / Domain controller think that the communication channel is being hacked (or that the certificate issued to the PC has expired).
Another possible problem could have been NMAS / NICI (Novell's version of PKI/kerberos communication channel). We typically don't install and configure the client to use NMAS or NICI, but it does get installed from time to time and it may explain your problem if it were installed. NMAS & NICI can also be difficult to un-install, and re-installing on top of a client that already (incorrectly) has (or had) them installed and mis-configured generally won't work. You have to verify that the NMAS & NICI software is completely removed and the registry is purged of the settings prior to re-installing the Novell Client. NICI may be required as part of the install, but its settings should be left alone lest you enjoy problems such as the one described."

8 replies

by wabalb

Thank you for having this information posted. I just had a user in my office come up with this problem. I've never seen it before, so I googled it and saw this post. I tried what you did and it worked - logged in locally as an admin, and changed the date. Somehow, the date had been set to May of 2008 (right now it is December 2007). After I changed the date backed they were able to login again. Thanks.

by nickolas lee

I have been wondering about this for about an hour and had to set pride aside and google it. This was the exact answer.

by alex304

I just ran into the same problem. I did a search on the Microsoft website and got nothing. Then I did a google search and came here. This post saved me a headache.

THANKS!!!

by erwin

Great info here.
It sure fixed the same problem I experienced.
I have a Windows 2003 AD domain and 4.91 sp2c Novell client.

by frankiesmum

Thanks. This was the solution I needed.
As an aside the date on the PC I was working on was 1/4/2010. Perhaps I was pranked?

by uniquegeek

We had been messing around with new switches, that may have had something to do with it.

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