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Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Query to Linked Server Fails With Error "An error occured during decryption"

Hi,

Recently someone asked me about this and I think i should post it on my blog.

Problem Description
**********************

Our development server crashed. It was a VM and the Virtual Disks disapeared. The server was rebuilt, SQL Server installed and i restored the master and msdb databases from a backup.

Now whenever i try and query a linked server i get the message "An error occured during decryption".

Resolution
************

Please check if we have a entry in our registry (below one)

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\\Security

Key Name is : Entropy

Value for this key will be a big characters (not readable).

If this entry is missing then run below command and it will recreate this entry and Linked Server should work.

USE MASTER

ALTER SERVICE MASTER KEY FROCE REGENERATE


NOTE: It might be that this registry key will be there, in that case I will still
suggest to Re-Generate the MASTER KEY.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Not a good idea if you have an encryption hierarchy already defined. This can break certain stuff in your environment.