Setting up SharePoint? Accounts need their domain.

I have been meaning to post this forever and keep forgetting. A very common issue I am seeing people have when setting up and configuring SharePoint is the way they are specifying account names. You must always specify domain\username. Even though SharePoint will never tell you this is the problem it is. Many users are tempted to just type in username for a service and then the password then they are greeted with a random/cryptic error message. After about an hour (or a day of reinstalling) they realize it was because they forgot to specify the domain name.

I will attempt to compile a list of error messages that have been caused by this issue and post them here. If you have one please post it in the comments and I will update the post. Thanks

Sample Error:

An unhandled exception occurred in the user interface.Exception Information: OSearch (SPSearchAcct)

Anyway, just a heads up!

Shane – SharePoint Help

Published Wed, Mar 7 2007 17:11 by Shane
Filed under: ,

Comments

# re: Setting up SharePoint? Accounts need their domain.

Wednesday, March 07, 2007 11:14 AM by AC [MVP MOSS]

Happy to be your inspiration for this post :P

# re: Setting up SharePoint? Accounts need their domain.

Tuesday, March 13, 2007 5:19 AM by Tom

Thanks a lot! It's too simple to be true, u saved me lots of time, thanks again, Tom

# re: Setting up SharePoint? Accounts need their domain.

Saturday, May 19, 2007 7:39 AM by nkcaump

But... doesn't this seem unacceptable? You can log into OWA without needing the DOMAIN\ - Why can't Sharepoint be configured with the same? We are a single domain site, our domain is understood. Just seems a pain to me.

# re: Setting up SharePoint? Accounts need their domain.

Saturday, May 19, 2007 9:49 AM by Shane

You can make SharePoint work this way.  There is several differnt ways.  One is turing on basic authentication in IIS and then specifying the default domain.  Or you can modify the behavior of IE.  www.sharepoint911.com/.../DispForm.aspx Either would work.  

# re: Setting up SharePoint? Accounts need their domain.

Wednesday, May 30, 2007 12:18 AM by Arundhati

Does this mean that we have to create all those accounts (SPSAdmins, SPSearchacct, etc on domain?

# re: Setting up SharePoint? Accounts need their domain.

Wednesday, May 30, 2007 12:47 PM by Shane

technet2.microsoft.com/.../f07768d4-ca37-447a-a056-1a67d93ef5401033.mspx

Check out this link for more information on the accounts you must create.

# re: Setting up SharePoint? Accounts need their domain.

Wednesday, January 02, 2008 9:42 PM by sanjaya

thanks, this worked with me.

# re: Setting up SharePoint? Accounts need their domain.

Thursday, May 29, 2008 4:24 PM by Luis Carlos Bernal

I am specify domain\username, not forgot to specify the domain name.

error messages

An unhandled exception occurred in the user interface.Exception Information: OSearch (itcol\adminsp)

help my please, no user domain works to start service

# re: Setting up SharePoint? Accounts need their domain.

Thursday, November 13, 2008 7:58 PM by Joel

hello .. i work for a hosted email provider service and i had to set up a domain name for a customer mybetterliving.org to be used only for sharepoint service retail gold customer domain and i dont know what is missing in the domain name configuration to work to give access to the sharepoint service ... is it a A record .. an ip address .. or else that is missing ?

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