Password Cache on WindowsXP Home

Had an interesting problem this week that I wanted to bring up.

I created a standard printer share on a WindowsXP Professional box that was joined to a local domain. Another computer on the local subnet, running WindowsXP Home and not a member of the first box’s domain – as Home cannot join domain security contexts – connected to the share using a UNC. I was challenged and I used a local user account on the Pro box to establish the connection, opting to “save password” to the user’s local cache to preserve connectivity to the share. All worked fine; I could print a test page.

Until, that is, a reboot on the Home PC. The printer’s *.pif read “Access Denied” – trying to access properties, the message: “The print spool service is not running”was displayed.

I struggled with this for a while because the target XP machine’s spooler was fine. I then learned it was because of a password cache issue with a HOME machine connecting to a PRO machine that was a part of a domain. By creating a login batch file for the startup folder, I reproduced a net use command:

net use \\computer\printershare /USER:[local_account] [password] /PERSISTENT:yes

This re-cached the login credential of a local user account on the PRO machine and allowed for printing. Why this limitation exists, -shrug-, no idea, but that’s how I worked around it.

R
www.micklerandassociates.com

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website

Notify me of follow-up comments by email.

Notify me of new posts by email.