SQL Server 2008, Kerberos and SPN

Question

Hi,

I installed SQL Server 2008 on a Win XP SP2 workstation in a AD domain and configured to run with the "Network Service" account. In my error log I have the following message (Event ID:26037):

The SQL Server Network Interface library could not register the Service 
Principal Name (SPN) for the SQL Server service.  **Error: 0xd, state: 13**. 
Failure to register an SPN may cause integrated authentication to fall 
back to NTLM instead of Kerberos. This is an informational message.
Further action is only required if Kerberos authentication is required 
by authentication policies.

The strange thing is that I have another SQL Server 2008 installation in a Win 2003 server configured in the same way and there I do not have this message.

My questions are:

• Does anybody know if there are limitations with Kerberos on Windows XP and SQL Server?
• Why the SPN is not automatically registered on Win XP when I use the "Network Service" but it works on Windows 2003 server?

THANKS!

Answer 1

In my experience the most common cause is an already existing registered SPN owned by an administrator. SETSPN.EXE should show this if you ask it to list the registered SPNs for the XP machine, and you should also be able to remove it if that's the case.