January 4, 2021 at 9:45 pm
Recently our linked servers are failing due to the following "Generic failure...Service Master Key..."
So knowing what I know I need to regenerate the Service Master Key using:
ALTER SERVICE MASTER KEY FORCE REGENERATE
Which I get the following:
The current master key cannot be decrypted. The error was ignored because the FORCE option was specified.
Msg 33096, Level 16, State 7, Line 1
A generic failure occurred during Service Master Key encryption or decryption.
I have searched everywhere and there is no information on this type of error.
I have no master keys, and no other encryption on the server hence why forcing regenerate was fine... but it doesnt work. There is only the ServiceMasterKey in the master DB
Version : SQL Server 2012 SP4 11.0.7001. Sysadmin Role using windows Auth and also Windows Admin. Server runs fine just cant link any other servers and old ones are failing.
Please if anyone has any ideas Please let me know, I really don't feel like rebuilding an instance at the moment.
January 5, 2021 at 10:10 pm
Thanks for posting your issue and hopefully someone will answer soon.
This is an automated bump to increase visibility of your question.
January 10, 2021 at 7:20 am
From other sources:
The current master key cannot be decrypted. If this is a database master key, you should attempt to open it in the session before performing this operation. The FORCE option can be used to ignore this error and continue the operation but the data encrypted by the old master key will be lost.
My suggestion:
I would suggest to remove all the linked servers, and add them back on in a test site first one at a time.
Also, restart the SQL server service to see if this helps. Reboot ok too. If all fails, please repair the SQL server installation or apply the latest service pack.
Cheers
DBASupport
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