Friday, April 3, 2015

PsExec -- Error deriving session key: The system cannot find the file specified

So this one's been driving me insane for a while (especially since I figured it out a while ago and never documented the solution).  On some systems I would only be able to get PsExec working half the time...the other half the time I'd receive this infuriating error:


C:\Users\CJ\Downloads>psexec \\chrlcltsbx803 -i -s cmd.exe

PsExec v2.11 - Execute processes remotely
Copyright (C) 2001-2014 Mark Russinovich
Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com

Error deriving session key:
The system cannot find the file specified.

So after running ProcMon to determine what file "couldn't be found," I realized--I was running PsExec  as my elevated administrative user without a profile.  As in: runas /noprofile /user:chrl\CJ cmd.exe. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to work due to something with HKCU cryptographic keys.

Either way, the issue went away once running under my elevated account without the /noprofile switch. Hope this saves someone a headache.

4 comments:

  1. headache saved! thank you!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Another big *thank you* from Austria!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks, this fixed it for me!

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  4. big thanks guys, this fixed my error for me. From Madagascar

    ReplyDelete