login | Tom's Notes

Not sure if you’ve experienced this one, but recently I have – so, maybe it will help someone.

I’ve had installed a brand new and fresh Windows Server 2025, updated to the maximum and configured it as I usually do. It’s a workgroup server, hosting some application, and it will be used by a few (local) users. No big deal.

But then – as I created all the required users and tried to log into a couple of them, noticed an issue – after logging in, I was stuck at a blank screen.

And it stays there. For quite some time. Or maybe forever?!

As this is not normal (LOL!), I’ve thought about what may be the issue – is it something I did?

Maybe the issue is AnyDesk through which I accessed the server? What exactly happens (or should happen) at that time?

Turns out this is the moment when you are (on your first login) being presented with the options to send diagnostic data to Microsoft. And it seems that these options are not loading on my machine, for all the new users… and it’s stuck there.

So, what I did was turning this off via (local) Group Policy, and after that any new login of a freshly created local user was working as it should – user being presented with the Desktop and Server Manager console. As nice folks at Microsoft intended.

You can find and enable the policy at the following location (run GPEdit.msc, of course):
Local Computer Policy – Computer Configuration – Administrative Templates – Windows Components – OOBE – Don’t launch privacy settings experience on user logon – set it to Enabled.

Hope it helps!

Cheers!

Funny thing I’ve learned the other day, which I want to share.

I was installing an app that needed the SQL database. As this was some “non-conventional” Java app, error that I’ve got made no sense – it said something like “Error 9. Database failed.”. (So helpful in many troubleshoots…) Smile

Figured it out after a few simple troubleshooting steps (maybe not written in the order taken, but tried all that Smile ).

Steps taken:

1. It’s Java based – it should be something with the app itself, right? No. Smile

2. My app account doesn’t have required SQL permissions? Recheck. It has.

3. Then this is definitely a networking/firewall issue (it’s always the network)? Not this time.

4. I know – it must be the (mistyped) password!? Retype (several times), reset password – no luck.

5. What then??? Smile

Next step in my troubleshoot (that actually gave some results) was to try to launch the SQL Server Management Studio with the user account that app uses to access SQL.

And… the moment of truth:

So… I finally have an error (“Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 4064 – Cannot open user default database.”) which actually means something! Smile

No real problem here – I can connect with my admin account and take a more careful look at this SQL login/user. Lets see:

It turns out that the login in question was having it’s Default database property set to blank. And it was blank because I’ve previously deleted the old database, without checking if it’s used somewhere… just to make sure the app installation creates a fresh one… silly me. Smile

No need to mention that app installation went just fine after taking care of this “thingy”. I love troubleshooting. Smile

Cheers!