I'm making an intranet webapplication in ASP.NET, using Windows auth and accessing Active Directory using the LDAP-pattern found in one of the stickies on top of the LDAP-threads-list here on forums.asp.net.

public static DataSet FindUsers(string sFilter, string[] columns, string path, bool useCached);

I've got a domain controller installed by my side, and using the following in a test-application:

string filter = "(objectClass=*)";
string[] columns = new string[]{"sn", "sAMAccountName", "cn"};
string path = "LDAP:///"; DataSet ds = FindUsers(filter, columns, path, false);
dataGridView1.DataSource = ds; dataGridView1.AutoGenerateColumns = true;
dataGridView1.DataMember = ds.Tables[0].ToString();

I fetch stuff easily, and the DataGridView is filled with it. Nice. BUT. Even if it works right now, tomorrow, or after some amount of hours (not sure how many though), I get DirectoryServicesCOMException thrown at me, saying:

"A local error has occurred.". It's triggered by the DirectorySearcher.FindAll()-function. Since it's working now, I don't have the exact output in front of me. Google gives me nada on the specific error message, and I get the error message in both my web app and the test-app I mentioned above.

Anyone with experiences on this? I've set up the domain controller myself, and started wondering if THAT is a potential error source.

Thanks in advance, Anders Øyvind

Expanding the error description, in case someone notice something familiar:

       at System.DirectoryServices.DirectorySearcher.FindAll()

 Hi,

I'm getting exactly the same error. Have you figured out how to resolve the issue?

I had this problem today when trying to access a windows 2003 AD domain from my vb.net app and this page was pretty much the only thing I found on google when searching for a solution. I eventually found a solution myself so thought I would post it just in case it helps anyone else. The way I got it working was to define the Authentication Type of the DirectoryEntry object as Secure. So for example, instead of this:

Dim MyUserDE As New DirectoryEntry(ldappath)

I now do this:

Dim MyUserDE As New DirectoryEntry(ldappath, username, password, AuthenticationTypes.Secure)

Hope that helps someone out.

Chris

One potential reason would be that the accound that the membership provider is running on is locked. Unlock the user, and you should be fine.

Thanks for the tip.  I have a windows application which was giving me a System.DirectoryServices.DirectoryServicesCOMException of "A local error has occurred" this was due to the user account under which the application was running being locked.

Just FYI, I had this "local error" in a one-way trust dev environment: I was trying to search - using FindOne() - for a user in the downstream domain.

I fixed this by ensuring the upstream server's primary DNS was pointing to its own domain and the alternate DNS was pointing to the downstream domain.