Hyper-V Server - “Cannot connect to the RPC service on computer <computer-name>. Make sure your RPC service is running.”

I installed Microsoft Hyper-V server back in November 2008. I almost never have any problems. It just sits there and runs. The only problem that I have is that periodically I won’t be able to remotely connect to from the Hyper-V Manager. I get the “Cannot connect to the RPC service on computer <computer-name>. Make sure your RPC service is running.” I addressed this issue here.

Today I encountered this error again. So I fired up Remote Desktop to connect to the server. Instead of connecting, I was greeted with a message about not being able to connect to the Local Security Authority.

I’ve seen this before and I should have written about it then. Doing so would have have saved me a couple of minutes.

This is my home network and both the server and my laptop run in a workgroup. The affect is that, while the same account is on both machines, the accounts are managed separately. The password for the account on the Hyper-V server had expired. I used RDP to connect as the admin and reset the password for my non-admin user. Now all is good and I won’t have this problem for another 45 days.