I saw the post this morning where the OP got help from Microsoft on the KB983444 problem. Unfortunately, I apparently have other problems, related to uninstalling and re-installing WSS 3.0 I have no CA and, when I try to run the SP wizard, it fails. Research led me to KB927156, but that fails with this message: The user parameter specified with the configdb command is invalid. When installed in standalone mode, you cannot specify a farm administrator user account or password. The local account NetworkService becomes the farm administrator by default when installed in standalone mode. What are they talking about? I have no clue.

Hi John, Basically it says that the username and or passoword your using is invalid to access SQL and intead the NetworkService account will be attempted... Any how please provide a little more information you uninstalled, reinstalled and then ran psconfigui? -Ivan Ivan Sanders My LinkedIn Profile, My Blog, @iasanders.

Basically it says that the username and or passoword your using is invalid There's a long thread in this forum on KB983444 breaking SP. When it first happened here, tried the PSconfig fix, with "wait" and "force". Didn't work. Uninstalled then re-installed WSS 3.0 and the site worked again. But I had automatic updates turned on and KB983444 installed again, and broke SP again. Uninstalled/Re-installed WSS and got our site back. Turned off automatic updates. Now have a server that I can't update... but WSS works. Today someone in the KB983444 thread posted something from Microsoft, where the user account that's being used to run psconfig needs to be a member of these groups: IIS_IUSRS , WSS_ADMIN_WPG , WSS_RESTRICTED_WPG , WSS_WPG Did that. Tried going into CA. It's not there. It apparently didn't get re-installed when I ran the wizard. And of course, now the wizard fails. So I found info KB927156, tried that. But got the error posted above. I think you're right, this has something to do with the NetworkService account. But I'm not sure what.

From a thread in another forum.. check this Hi Brian, Thank you for your patience on this matter. I checked the latest log you uploaded and found our issue is little different from other similar cases that reported by other partners recently. The credential reported in the upgrade.log is a domain account and I assume is the Network Administrator account. However, domain accounts will not get added to the SQL Server by default, so I suspect you added it to SQL Server before by manual; lets focus on this point first. The login failed user is 'ELE*****\Ele*****Admin', and I think you changed the domain part in your original post. Anyway, we can follow below steps to verify this account. 1. Click Start, point to All Programs, point to SQL Server 2005, right-click SQL Server Management Studio, and then click Run as administrator. 2. The Connect to Server dialog appears. In the Server name field, specify \\.\pipe\MSSQL$MICROSOFT##SSEE\sql\query <file://\\.\pipe\MSSQL$MICROSOFT##SSEE\sql\query> and click Connect. 3. Expand to Security > Login, if the 'ELE*****\Ele*****Admin' account list here, right-click this account and select Properties. 4. Then go to User Mapping tab, find the WSS_Search_WIN-EUGSO7LO7PY and select the checkbox, then in the bottom click db_owner for this database. After all, click OK to save the change. If you added the 'ELE*****\Ele*****Admin' to SQLServer2005MSFTEUser$SERVER$MICROSOFT##SSEE or SQLServer2005MSSQLUser$SERVER$MICROSOFT##SSEE groups, follow above steps to assign the db_owner for those groups. Then please close the SQL Server Management Studio, and: a. Click Start, right-click Command Prompt and select Run as administrator. b. Type below command to change the directory. cd c:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\Bin c. At the command prompt, type the following command, and then press ENTER to stop the SPWebService service: stsadm -o provisionservice -action stop -servicetype spwebservice -servicename "" d. After the SPWebService service has stopped, type the following command, and then press ENTER to start the SPWebService service: stsadm -o provisionservice -action start -servicetype spwebservice -servicename "" e. After the SPWebService service is started, type the following command to complete the hotfix process or the update process: psconfig -cmd upgrade -inplace b2b -wait -force Whats the result? If above steps still cannot relieve our issue, please collect the logs then upload to the workspace again. We need to collect the logs many times to narrow down this issue, sorry for the inconvenience. I look forward to your reply. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Best regards, *Joshua Tu, MCSE/MCSA +Sec, MCITP *Partner Online Technical Community ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We hope you get value from our new forums platform! Tell us what you think: http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/partnerfdbk/threads ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

I just took a look at that. I'm not a SQL expert, so this is beyond me. In step 2 it mentions the "Server name field", the one in the post doesn't bring up anything. So I left it what it had defaulted to: \\.\pipe\MSSQL$MICROSOFT##SSEE\sql\query I followed the instructions and added the DB owner. Ran the SP wizard again, and I believe it failed at step 5: --------------------------------------- Failed to register SharePoint services. An exception of type System.ArgumentException was thrown. Additional exception information: Error during encryption or decryption. System error code 997 --------------------------------------- I think your post may be on the right track. But I'm not sure where to go with this next, since I don't know how to apply those instructions to my specifics. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.