I am receiving the following error when trying to add my SharePoint 2013 SP1 with NOV 2014 CU to the farm. I have searched the web, attempted to change the passphrases even thought I knew them etc. Error is below. Creating a new farm is out of the question.
An exception of type System.ArgumentException was thrown. Additional exception information: Error during decryption. Ensure the passphrase is correct.
System.ArgumentException: Error during decryption. Ensure the passphrase is correct.
I fixed the issue, but uninstalled and re-installing sharepoint binaries, service pack 1, and nov 2014 cu over 15 times….On the final try I uninstalled, and also cleared the cache from the following locations on all servers in the farm. In the end it took me over 24 hours to fix this issue. I also changed the passphrase over 8 times 🙂
Thanks for alls help.
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Stop the Timer service. To do this, follow these steps:
- Click Start, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Services.
- Right-click SharePoint 2013 Timer, and then click Stop.
- Close the Services console.
- On the computer that is running Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 and on which the Central Administration site is hosted, click Start, click Run, type explorer, and then press ENTER.
- In Windows Explorer, locate and then double-click the following folder:
- %SystemDrive%\ProgramData\Microsoft\SharePoint\Config\GUID
- Notes
- The %SystemDrive% system variable specifies the letter of the drive on which Windows is installed. By default, Windows is installed on drive C.
- The GUID placeholder specifies the GUID folder. There may be more than one of these.
- The ProgramData folder may be hidden. To view the hidden folder, follow these steps:
- On the Tools menu, click Folder Options.
- Click the View tab.
- In the Advanced settings list, click Show hidden files and folders under Hidden files and folders, and then click OK.
- You can also simply type this directly in the path if you do not want to show hidden files and folders.
- Back up the Cache.ini file. (Make a copy of it. DO NOT DELETE THIS FILE, Only the XML files in the next step)
- Delete all the XML configuration files in the GUID folder (DO NOTE DELETE THE FOLDER). Do this so that you can verify that the GUID folders content is replaced by new XML configuration files when the cache is rebuilt.
Note When you empty the configuration cache in the GUID folder, make sure that you do NOT delete the GUID folder and the Cache.ini file that is located in the GUID folder. - Double-click the Cache.ini file.
- On the Edit menu, click Select All.
- On the Edit menu, click Delete.
- Type 1, and then click Save on the File menu. (Basically when you are done, the only text in the config.ini file should be the number 1)
- On the File menu, click Exit.
- Start the Timer service. To do this, follow these steps:
- Click Start, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Services.
- Right-click SharePoint 2013 Timer, and then click Start.
- Close the Services console.
- Note The file system cache is re-created after you perform this procedure. Make sure that you perform this procedure on all servers in the server farm.
- Make sure that the Cache.ini file in the GUID folder now contains its previous value. For example, make sure that the value of the Cache.ini file is not 1.
- Check in the GUID folder to make sure that the xml files are repopulating. This may take a bit of time.
I received a similar error when I was adding 2 new WFE to an existing farm. We were using a virtual machine template in our VMware environment that had all the binaries on it. For 1 vm, we attached without an problem, for another, we were getting the same error as you. In the end, I created a new vm without the template, reinstalled all the prerequisite and SP binaries, and then was able to connect. May want to look at trying that.
login in to the one of the WFE and run the poweshell script first to retrieve the existing password. Then you can use it to join the new server.
