Zahid's blog on Data Engineering and BI

This error caused me so much trouble in the last few weeks. I was trying to set up Web Configuration for Master Data Service (SQL Server 2008 R2) in Configuration Manager. Below is a screen shot

I was logged in with my domain user account. Naturally, I was typing User Name as “domain\user”. But, the error message kept popping up every time. That domain account also had Admin privilege in my workstation. But, it simply didn’t work. At last, I found a work around:

1. I created a built-in account and made it Administrator of the local machine (it’s not a domain account, it’s a windows 7 user account created in the workstation).

2. Then I gave the user access to SQL Server Database which was being used by the MDS application.

3. Then I typed that user name in the User Name field in the web configuration

4. This time the user was accepted.

The probable reasons could be:

1. The web configuration requires the user account to be an Administrator in the domain/ Active directory. I did not have the opportunity to make the domain user account an Admin in the Active Directory and see if it works that way.

2. Or, may be the configuration does not look beyond the local machine at all. Although, the word “Active Directory” reminds me about a Network/Domain.

The error message is surely quite confusing. Because, the first time I was using a domain user account which was clearly available in the Active Directory. it was granted Admin rights in the local machine. The only difference was that the accepted account was a built-in account and the rejected user was a domain account.