Error Code 0x8009030e in SCVMM 2008 and Hyper-V Management Consoles when trying to connect to a Virtual Machine

Hello! This morning, I logged into my Hyper-V/SCVMM 2008 server to deploy a new Windows Server 2008 to my Hyper-V server and as soon as I launched SCVMM 2008 console and I kept getting the following error message;

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Upon clicking the OK button, the error message popped up again and again. Hm…

I opened Hyper-V management console. No Errors!

Tried to connect to a VM and VMConnect (Virtual Machine’s console) Window gave me the same error code. (0x8009030e)

Looking at the err.exe tool the error translates to;

C:\>err.exe 0x8009030e

SEC_E_NO_CREDENTIALS                        winerror.h
# No credentials are available in the security package

Searching for the same Error and Hyper-V on bing.com I got couple of hits on social.technet.microsoft.com that were pointing to unchecking the check box for “Use default credentials automatically (no prompt)” in Hyper-V Settings…  

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I unchecked the check box mentioned above and hyper-v started prompting for credentials every time I was trying to connect to a Virtual Machine’s console.

Starting the SCVMM 2008 console pops up the user credential’s window. Not very fun to keep getting prompted for your credentials, right?

Did some more digging to see what’s exactly causing this;

since 0x8009030e is pointing to certificate authentication in other scenarios of getting this error code, I believe Hyper-V is using a certificate to authenticate instead of NTLM or my Kerberos ticket.

Well, If you’ve ever logged on remotely to a Windows Server 2008 on a network that requires Smart Card Certificate in addition to your credentials, you know that if you don’t provide your credentials in few seconds, Windows Server 2008 will read and use your certificate on the smart card to log you on. Smart, isn’t it?

To make the story short, I found out that I was logged on to my server using the smart card certificate instead of my normal credentials. Logged out and logged back in by providing my domain username/password and everything looks good!

If you see this issue, you’ll need to log out, log back in with your domain credentials and you won’t see the error anymore. Disconnecting from your Remote Desktop Session and reconnecting back by providing your domain username and password won’t fix the issue since you’ve already logged on with your smart card certificate and just reconnecting to that existing session. You’ll need a logoff and then a brand new session to fix this problem. Hope this helps solve this puzzle for you too! So long…