Vista "Server execution failed" message - very frustrating

Greetings Microsoft,

From searching Google for the phrases vista "server execution failed", it
appears that a significant number of Vista users (including myself) have been
getting a "Server execution failed" error after installing AOL AIM 5 or 6 if
UAC has been modified or disabled.

I'm sure it would be much appreciated if Microsoft and AOL could post a KB
article on this year-old problem ASAP. Because they have not done so, their
customers are resorting to home-brewed actions that weaken their computer's
security.

There are ongoing threads discussing this on microsoft.com forums and at
aol.com. The Microsoft thread starts in early 2007 over a year ago. The
error is seen in the Network and Sharing Center, after a delay of about a
minute in opening up that window. When the window finally opens, it appears
impossible to enumerate and manage network connections and sharing. If you
don't already have a working network connection, that means you probably
won't be able to establish one to get to the Internet etc. You also get a
red X over the networking systray icon, whether or not the connection works.
Some uers also reported some kind of user profile corruption where you get
just a black screen and mouse pointer for one user profile after changing
certain settings and logging out and back in. I encountered this as well and
had to delete the user profile.

My reason for bringing up this issue is that a fair number of newsgroup
posts and web pages including some from MVPs are suggesting the unofficial
fix of adding the "Local Service" account to the local Administrators group.
This weakens Vista's security. I kept searching and eventually found there's
a better fix where you uninstall and reinstall AIM with UAC temporarily fully
enabled, but that suggestion gets drowned out by the first suggestion. I
haven't found any official fix on Microsoft.com or AOL.com. Users are
understandably frustrated with AOL and Microsoft when they learn that they
must have been aware of this for over a year but haven't issued a KB article
or a fix.

I had also installed MSN Messenger / Windows Live Messenger chat with
Windows Live OneCare Family Safety. With this installed, I got the error
"“The Family Safety service has been disabled, please ask the
administrator..." and couldn't access the Internet at all via IE or Firefox
until I uninstalled OneCare Family Safety (not sure I'll be reinstalling it).

I tried to enable auditing to figure out what permission was actually
missing for the Local Service account. The security log suggested that the
Local Service account was repeatedly blocked from using the
seSecurityPrivilege ("Manage auditing and security log") via the LSASS.EXE
process. However, I granted that permission in the Group Policy MMC and
rebooted, and the audit log showed new entries after reboot of this
permission still being denied?? I didn't find any file permissions off in
the Windows folder, and haven't enabled auditing on the registry or any other
folders outside of Windows.

I suppose it's possible this might not directly be Microsoft's problem to
fix. But Microsoft regularly publishes KB articles on problems with third
party software, so I don't understand the year-long silence on this. And the
issue with the seSecurityPrivilege being denied despite granting that
permission doesn't seem like an AOL issue. Some people mentioned KB941649 as
being a patch for this, but the patch installer says that patch is not
applicable to my system.

The following Google searches suggest that the only mention of this at
microsoft.com or aol.com is in the support forums, nothing official from
Microsoft or AOL:

vista "server execution failed" site:microsoft.com -forums.microsoft.com
vista "server execution failed" site:aol.com


--
kind regards,
Karl Levinson, CISSP, CCSA, MCSE
-------------------------
Microsoft Security FAQ:
http://www.securityadmin.info

Same problem w/ Vista Home Premium. AOL has never been on my system. Using the following even though it breeches security. It's my network! Better to have a less secure network than no network. Sheeesh!

Building on BlueShot's fix focused on business Vista, there is now a simple fix for Vista Home users, as well, for the "server execution error" and red "x" over the wireless networking icon.

Simply run a command prompt as an administrator (right-click on it and click "Open as Administrator") then enter the following command line:

net localgroup "Administrators" "NT Authority\Local Service" /add

That should do it. We should thank God for the each other because Microsoft sure has no F-ing idea what they are doing yet.

docinventor
Don't forget to reboot (restart)

P.S.- please distribute this to other groups...