STS: Error Message After You Change Password: ADO Error 80040E4D: Login Failed for User 'sa'

After you change the database connection password for your SharePoint team Web site, you cannot use your Microsoft Office 2000 Server Extensions-based Web sites for discussions or collaborations.

When you view the Application Log from within Event Viewer, you see the following Office Web Server error message:

This behavior occurs because the Office 2000 Server Extensions-based virtual servers can no longer access the Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Desktop Engine.

NOTE: The previous version of Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Desktop Engine is named Microsoft Data Engine (MSDE).

When you use the Owsadm.exe utility to change the database connection password, the Office 2000 Server Extensions installation is not configured with the new password.

To work around this issue, configure the Office 2000 Server Extensions to use the new database connection password. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Start OSE Administrator (HTML). If an Enter Network Password dialog box appears, type your user name, password, and domain into the corresponding boxes, and then click OK.
2. On the Microsoft Office Server Extensions Administrator home page, click Database Settings.
3. On the Database Settings page, click Change Office Database.
4. Type the SQL Server name and the Database name into the corresponding boxes.
   
   If you do not know this information, follow these steps to obtain it from the Microsoft Windows registry:WARNING: If you use Registry Editor incorrectly, you may cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall your operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that you can solve problems that result from using Registry Editor incorrectly. Use Registry Editor at your own risk.
   
   
   1. Click Start, and then click Run.
   2. In the Open box, type regedit, and then click OK.
   3. In Registry Editor, expand the following subkey:
      HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\9.0\Web Server\OWS Metadata Stores\SQL MDStore1
   4. In the right pane, record the Data value that corresponds to the DNS entry. For example:
      Provider=sqloledb;Server=server name;Database=Default_Web_Site_Collab
   5. Quit Registry Editor.
   6. On the Office Server Extensions Database Settings page, type the server name that you recorded in step d in the SQL Server box.
   7. In the Database Name box, type the name of the database that you recorded in step d.
5. In the User Id box, type sa.
6. In the Password box, type the new database connection password, and then click Submit.
7. Restart the server computer.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.

For additional information about configuring SQL database passwords, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: