Windows telling me, the local security authority is internally inconsistent upon mounting a network drive

Question

Since ages I've mounted a network share (via samba to a Linux machine) in Windows 7 to access it via drive letter. This worked flawlessly so far. Until now.

Suddenly I couldn't access the drive anymore. Windows was telling me the network name (I didn't remember the exact term) was already in use. So I disconnected and tried to connect again:

net use Y: \\10.10.10.208\work

After a long time I get a message saying

"The Local Security Authority (LSA) database contains an internal inconsistency"

A restart didn't help. The mapped share is accessible (works on other machines in the same network), so obviously something strange is going on on my machine. Can anyone tell me how I can fix this inconsistency?

Update: All machines that have saved the login information refuse with this error. So it must be something with the authorization. When I use

net use Y: \\10.10.10.208\work /user:raphael

it prompts me for the password and then returns that error message.

Answer 1

I finally solved this issue:

After finding out that all machines had the same problem it was obvious it was a problem of the remote server not the client machines. So I took a look at the command history of the remote servers and found out that a colleague installed acl support, which then made samba refuse to work properly. I needed to add acl support to the smb.conf like this:

[myshare]
    nt acl support = yes

and restarted the samba service on my Debian remote machine with

/etc/init.d/samba restart

and it worked like a charm then.

Thanks to http://aisalen.wordpress.com/2007/08/10/acls-on-samba/ which gave me the solution.

Answer 2

Some ideas:

Try creating a new user account on that system and see if the error recurs. If it doesn't, use that account instead; delete your old system account via sysdm.cpl after copying your files.

Do you have a WLAN driver that allows you to be connected to your wireless before you login (such as Intel PROSet)? Try uninstalling the WLAN card and reinstalling, and/or updating the software for that WLAN card.

Does your system have a thumbprint scanner or security card reader? Try removing or updating the software associated with it.

If you have any other type of software that extends or modifies the Windows login process, try removing or updating that software.

If none of the above resolve, I'd suspect malware has infected lsass.exe at the very least. Perform a virus scan. You may try replacing that file from a known good system or reinstalling Windows.

Answer 3

Just saw that error message accessing a WD Mybook Live (NAS), via: \\{symbolic name}\public . There should be No login. However, Win8.1 may have thrown that error, in error (as it were). The WD NAS device seems to be having issues with a new gateway router. Access will be fine for nearly 24 hr, then Win8.1 essentially says "I see nothing" (think of Sgt Schultz, Hogan's Heroes).

No problem accessing the NAS via: http://{symbolic name}/UI. Doing a device reboot there seems to resolve (for a time) whatever the issue is.