MOSS Shared Services Provider Administration Job Error (Event ID 6482)

SYMPTOMS

The Event Log shows the following error entry for Office Server Shared Services with Event ID 6482, every couple of minutes:

Application Server Administration job failed for service instance Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.SearchServiceInstance (edc207f7-5d7e-44cc-b65a-2326be88ffca).
Reason: No mapping between account names and security IDs was done. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070534)

Additionally, when you click the “View Properties” menu entry of the SSP in Central Administration / Shared Services in this Farm, an error page appers with the following error:

An unhandled exception occurred in the user interface.Exception Information: The specified account name is invalid.
Parameter name: account

CAUSE

The SSP adds the application pool account to the “View Properties” page of the SSP. If this application pool is later changed and the original account is removed from Active Directory, the page crashes because it can’t map the username to the actual user (as there is none to be found). Additionally, there’s a timer job in SSP that refreshes the configuration and it also fails due to the same error.

SOLUTION

• Set the detailed SharePoint logs in Central Administration, by setting Verbose level for the “Office Server General” category
• In the logs, check the user that SSP is trying to find
• Recreate that user temporarily in Active Directory (with no special privileges)
• Go to the SSP Properties page in Central Administration and remove that user from the last list box in the properties page (“Process Accounts”)
• Remove that user from the Active Directory