Virtual Machine Cloning, SIDS, and SQL SERVER 2005

Douglas Marsh — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 05:06:53 GMT

I use virtual environments for all my BizTalk development. I have several base machines that I clone to use as my actual development boxes.

A couple of days ago, I was installing Microsoft Updates to my current BizTalk Dev Environment and one of the updates failed to install. The culprit was the Critical Update For Sql Server 2005 SP2 KB934458. Since, the update, while critical didn’t directly affect me, I ignored it. Until automatic updates complaining about it every day forced me it to action.

I downloaded the off-line version of the hotfix and went to work. I attempted to install it from the offline version and it failed, however, it pointed me to the installation log for the hotfix. After scanning the log for a few minutes I found the following line:

Windows Error Text: No mapping between account names and security IDs was done.

A little investigation with Google turned up this forum post.

Part of my Virtual Machine cloning processing is renaming the machine using NewSID. When SQL Server is installed, it creates local groups for ACLs. The SIDs for those groups are stored in the registry. NewSID changes all SIDs invalidated the SIDs that SQL Server cached. It seems that using the server doesn’t require these SIDs but patching it does.

The fix is fairly easy.
In the registry, delete the following keys:
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\Setup
                AGTGroup
                SQLGroup
                FTSGroup

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.2\Setup
                ASGroup

When the hotfix runs, it will recreate the groups and the SIDs.

Add for those who may ask, renaming the server in SQL SERVER doesn’t fix this issue.