The SceCli 1202 events are logged when some Group Policy settings are refreshed in Windows Server 2008 R2 and in Windows 7

Symptoms

Consider the following scenario:

• On a computer that is running Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows 7, you use the Group Policy Management Editor to manage a Group Policy object (GPO).
  

• Some changes are made to the User Rights Assignment settings in the GPO, and these settings have a per-service SID defined.

• You are exporting and importing a policy that has user rights assignment setting through the Group Policy Management Console (GPMC).

• You are running Group Policy Change Management using Advanced Group Policy Management (AGPM).

In this scenario, you may encounter the following problems when the resulting GPO is applied:

• The following SceCli 1202 event is added to the Application log:
  
  

• Some applications and some services do not start. These applications and these services use the per-service SID to configure some security settings.

The following are some more specific examples of the problems:

• Some services cannot start on a domain controller that is running Windows Server 2008 R2. An example of a service that cannot start is the Diagnostic System Host service.

• Some SQL Server functions such as the functions for replication do not work when the functions try to perform account changes, or when the functions try to perform changes to the folder permission settings.
  

• Some functions in Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.5 do not work.

Cause

When the Group Policy Management Editor changes settings under User Rights Assignment, it translates per-service SIDs to the service names. For example, the "WdiServiceHost" service name.



The Group Policy Management Editor does not add the "NT Service" or "IIS AppPool" prefix to the service name when it performs the lookup in the internal “NT Service” domain or the internal "IIS AppPool" domain. When the Group Policy Management Editor writes the previously parsed name back to the GptTmpl.inf file, the Group Policy Management Editor tries to resolve only the service name against the default Active Directory domain. However, this attempt fails. Additionally, the string of the service name is written to the GptTmpl.inf file instead of the per-service SID. This behavior replaces the per-service SID with the service name.



When the next policy update occurs, the update tries to resolve the service name to a SID. However, the update assumes the service name is a user or group account. Therefore, this behavior fails, and you receive the following error message:

Resolution

Workaround

To work around this issue, add the prefix to the service accounts manually by editing the GptTmpl.inf file.

• For the IIS identities, add the "IIS AppPool\" prefix. The following are some samples of an IIS identity:

  • DefaultAppPool

  • Classic .NET AppPool

• For the Windows service names and for the SQL Server service names, add the “NT service" prefix. The following are some samples of a Windows service name and of a SQL Server service name:

  • WdiServiceHost

  • MSSQLSERVER

  • MSSQLFDLauncher

Note We recommend that you install this hotfix to resolve this issue.

Status

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed in the "Applies to" section.

More Information

This hotfix resolves this issue for the "IIS AppPool\" prefix. If you open the GptTmpl.inf file in the following related Group Policy folder, you find some service names instead of SIDs:

%SYSTEMROOT%\SYSVOL\<domainname>\Policies\<Unique ID>\Machine\Microsoft\Windows NT\SecEdit

The following is an example of some unresolved service names that are found in the GptTmpl.inf file:

[Privilege Rights]
SeAssignPrimaryTokenPrivilege = WdiServiceHost,*S-1-5-20,*S-1-5-19,DefaultAppPool,Classic .NET AppPool,MSSQLSERVER,MSSQLFDLauncher
SeChangeNotifyPrivilege = WdiServiceHost,*S-1-5-32-554,*S-1-5-11,*S-1-5-32-544,*S-1-5-20,*S-1-5-19,*S-1-1- 0,MSSQLSERVER,MSSQLFDLauncher
SeAuditPrivilege = DefaultAppPool,*S-1-5-19,*S-1-5-20,Classic .NET AppPool
For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

975566 SceCli 1202 events are logged every time Computer Group Policy settings are refreshed on a computer that is running Windows Server 2008 or Windows Vista

For more information about software update terminology, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

824684 Description of the standard terminology that is used to describe Microsoft software updates