Windows cannot find /idlist,:#:#,. Make sure you typed the name correctly and try again.

September 11, 2006

Half way through my vacation last week, my computer started running a little sluggish. Started taking longer to boot up, logins were taking significantly longer, and I started getting a weird error message right after logon.


Windows cannot find /idlist,:#:#,. Make sure you typed the name 
  correctly and try again.

This was a little odd. I did all the usual steps, checked the registry for this weird entry, then the start-up script, and nothing. I couldn’t find the /idlist string. Off to our trusty Google.

First result I stumbled across was from TechRepublic (which can be found here). The first comment gave me a clue, some stuff about “Active Directory”. It dawned on me that I’d not “logged on” to the work domain in a little over a week. My laptop was probably getting a little upset about the cached login credentials. Along with my login, there are services that start using domain logins too, this might indicate a little bit of an issue.

My solution? Same as I give all the account managers when their passwords expire, and they change it from the VPN client. VPN into the network, lock your work station, and unlock it. This will force your laptop to re-fetch the credentials, and update anything else it needs to (some fun Kerberos stuff in there I think).

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