Could not obtain information about Windows NT group/user ‘domain\user’, error code 0x5


When getting this error message Could not obtain information about Windows NT group/user ‘domainname\username’, error code 0x5 in SQL Server you may be wondering what’s happening.

This error message can happen in numerous occasions and while executing different T-SQL Statements, such as xp_logininfo

Or while executing sp_xp_cmdshell_proxy_account while you are nonetheless syasdmin:

In all case you may recall that 0x5 means access denied, so the SQL Server service cannot retrieve Active Directory information about the user.

You may then check that

  • the user indeed exists in the Active Directory; in particular, are you sure it’s not a SQL Login for which somebody prepended the domain name?
  • the SQL Server service account is not a disabled/locked account

If all above fails, you may want to add the service account running SQL Server into the built-in Active Directory Group called Windows Authorization Access Group.

As mentioned in the description, this group has the right to read an attribute on every user object which is not a fixed but computed result of the membership of the global and universal groups.

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