Re: ESENT and SceCli errors in event log for Win2K SP4

[Clayton Tucker]

Hi Folks,

Under Administrator tools, Local Security settings clicking on Account
policies or Local Policies I get the right hand window saying:

"Windows cannot open the local policy database.

An unknown error occured when attempting to open the database."


I am also continually seeing under event viewer application, Error log
Events for ESENT, Event ID 427, services (248) The database engine could
not access the file called E:\WINNT\Security\edb.chk.

Also:

services (248) The database engine could not access the file called
E:\WINNT\Security\res2.log.

and

services (248) The database engine is rejecting update operations due to
low free disk space on the log disk.

plus a warning for SceCli Event ID 1202

Security policies are propagated with warning. 0x4b8 : An extended error
has occurred.

For best results in resolving this event, log on with a
non-administrative account and search http://support.microsoft.com for
"Troubleshooting Event 1202s".

My guess is that all these events are linked but what is causing them?

I've had a look at the knowledge base but no group or security policies
have ever been defined. I wouldn't know how to if I wanted to!

There is over 4gb of free space, the files exist although edb, res1 and
res2 are all showing as 1Mb in size but nothing appears to be in res1 or
res2. Few lines of junk characters in ebd.

Can they be deleted and will then automatically get re-created
properly??

Greetings:

I had a similar problem. I found that it was the result of my security
database being missing on my system. It is suppost to be located in
%systemroot%\security\Database. In my case the folder was gone. The
reason for this is unclear however I suspect a failed software
installation attempt on my part was the most likely cause.

Anyways, to fix this problem I did three things:

1) Exited the Local Security Policy (Group Policy) tool.

2) Copied a Database (and a Templates) folder from a similar (but
working) Windows 2000 system into the local security
(%systemroot%\security) folder.
Ofcoarse this begs the question: What do I do if I do not have a
sister Windows system? Unfortunately, I have not found a mechanism to
regenerate the security database from default. I'm still looking into
that.

3) Renamed (delete will not work) all files of the form edb.* and
res*.* from the security folder. This is outlined in the JSI Tip 2668
(http://www.jsifaq.com/subf/TIP2600/rh2668.htm)


This resulted in fixing my Local Security policies tool. However, I
had to re-do my security settings for the local system.

Hope this is of help.

Clayton Tucker - MFCF
University of Waterloo,
Waterloo, Ontario.