VMware Guest OS: The trust relationship between this workstation and the primary domain failed

Posted byMaris

VMware Guest OS: The trust relationship between this workstation and the primary domain failed.

I received this errors two times on a row for two different computers.

I am not 100% sure, but from reading the web I came to conclusion that this error is encountered when:

  1. SID gets cloned when computer gets cloned using VMware. Not right after cloning, but at the random after some time.
  2. Guest OS gets reverted to some earlier snapshot.

In both cases leaving and joining Domain again fixes this issue.

P.S. Some time ago there was an utility called NewSID, but now it’s gone. NewSID has been retired and is no longer available for download. Please see Mark Russinovich’s blog post: NewSID Retirement and the Machine SID Duplication Myth.