Error: 18452 – login is from an untrusted domain and cannot be used with Windows authentication

Note:

This is just a work around & not root cause.  This does not work in all cases, and is environment dependent.

 

Problem:

Being in a new environment, sometime I will get the following error when I attempt to connect to SQL Server with Windows Authentication from my workstation using SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS).

Error:

Cannot connect to <hostname>.
Login failed. The login is from an untrusted domain and cannot be used with Windows authentication. (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 18452)

This is odd because I am able to RDP on the server where my Active Directory login works with SSMS .  Also, strange because most of the other SQL Servers in this domain do not have this issue.  This is a challenge to troubleshoot with this being a very locked down environment, which I have limited visibility to the settings with the Windows Server operating system.  However this SQL Server is configured for for Mixed-Mode authentication (so its not that issue).

Work Around:

When attempting to connect to SQL Server using SSMS with this problem with Windows Authentication, click on the Options button.

Then in the Connection Properties tab, click the check box for “Trust Server Certificate”, and then click on the Connect button.

Side Note:

To help those applications with this issue, had to adjust the ODBC setting or ODBC string to add “TrustServerCertificate=True”.

 

If I ever find root cause, I will update this post.  If you have found root cause, please share in the comments below.

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