Problem: "The user name or password is incorrect" if you try to connect to SBS 2003 based network share or Exchange via Outlook

 

Situation: there is a number of client computers in a local SBS 2003 based domain. Every computer but one is domain member and runs Windows XP SP3. All users have access to network share (via explorer) and mailboxes (via Outlook 2003/2010) on the SBS 2003 SP2 server in the domain.

Suddenly the only non-domain computers – a workgroup computer – gets no access to network share and to Exchange mailbox. The user gets repeating error message

"The user name or password is incorrect"

The same username/password pair succeeds on every other computer in the LAN.

The most popular problem is: the clock on the client computer and on the serve are not synchronized. In our case: somebody misconfigured client’s date/time setting the next month as current, so the date/time difference between client and server was 1 month.

After setting client’s date/time same as on the server the access to network shares and Exchange account via Outlook was restored immediately.

So, in case of same or similar error message

• check the date/time settings on the server
• check the date/time settings on the client computer
• compare and synchronize them if required

Enjoy!

WinXP: Cannot browse LAN resources (share/printer) or Workstation service won’t start

 

Imagine: you still have an old box running Windows XP bound to your local network. One day you start the box and see the surprise: you can surf in internet, send and receive mails, chat and skype – but you have no access to the local network resources (like server shares or network printers).

Double click on the icon Network –> Microsoft Windows Network opens an error message “The network is not present or not started.”.

You may try the fix from MS knowledge base - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/170336/en-us

If it won’t help: go to services control panel applet and check if the workstation service is started. Probably not. This is the reason.

Try to start it: if the service won’t start – look at the error message. You may receive following error message:

Error 126: The specified module could not be found when starting a service

The possible reason is described here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/959077.

´The registry on your machine is damaged by a virus and contains unsuitable entry in the key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\ lanmanworkstation\parameters\ServiceDll

pointing to a Trojan library module (in our case – aptwanxok.dll). The enemy library may be already removed from your machine, but the registry key is still pointing to it and requires to load blocking start of the service due to missing module.

Replace the entry with

%SystemRoot%\System32\wkssvc.dll

restart the computer and enjoy!