Thursday, April 26, 2012

Cannot Generate SSPI Context

Oh this cursed error! If you google it you will find tons of possible solutions that fixes this dreaded issue. In this short post I will describe what fixed the problem for me.

First a little background on previous events. One of our SQL Servers was rebuilt by creating a separate VM for it with the same name as the original after the original was taken offline.

Next day I am unable to use Windows Authentication to log into this new server. I get the Cannot Generate SSPI Contect message. I can log into the server itself and access the databases without any problem locally. I can even do that on someone else's computer, just not mine.

I play around with the setspn command line utility for a while but nothing helps.

Finally I log into the server using a SQL account. After that is successful I try the Windows login and finally, I'm in!

Such a simple solution. I hope this will help someone else too.