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Event ID 12289 — Database Commit

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Applies To: Windows Server 2008

The Security Accounts Manager (SAM) is a service that is used during the logon process. The SAM maintains user account information, including groups to which a user belongs. The SAM is attempting to write changes to its database.

Event Details

Product: Windows Operating System
ID: 12289
Source: SAM
Version: 6.0
Symbolic Name: SAMMSG_REFRESH_FAILED
Message: SAM failed to restore the database to an earlier state. SAM has shutdown. You must reboot the machine to re-enable SAM.

Resolve

Restart the computer to enable the SAM database

The Security Accounts Manager (SAM) experienced a commit failure, and it also failed to revert to an earlier state. Ensure that the system drive is not completely out of free disk space, and then restart the computer. To enable SAM access again, you must restart the system. Perform the following procedure on the computer that is logging the event to be resolved.

To perform these procedures, you must have membership in Domain Admins, or you must have been delegated the appropriate authority.

To ensure that there is enough free disk space on the system drive:

  1. Open a command prompt as an administrator. To open a command prompt as an administrator, click Start. In Start Search, type Command Prompt. At the top of the Start Menu, right-click Command Prompt, and then click Run as administrator. If the User Account Control dialog box appears, confirm that the action it displays is what you want, and then click Continue.
  2. At the command prompt, type cd /d %systemroot%, and then press ENTER.
  3. Type dir, and then press ENTER. The last line of the command output displays the number of bytes that are free, which should be at least 10,024 or more. If there are not enough free bytes reported, remove unnecessary files from the System root drive.
  4. Restart the computer to enable the SAM database.

Verify

To perform this procedure, you must have membership in Domain Admins, or you must have been delegated the appropriate authority.

To verify that the Security Accounts Manager (SAM) exists and that there is enough free disk space to make updates to the database:

Caution: Incorrectly editing the registry might severely damage your system. Before making changes to the registry, you should back up any valued data.

  1. Open a command prompt as an administrator. To open a command prompt as an administrator, click Start. In Start Search, type Command Prompt. At the top of the Start Menu, right-click Command Prompt, and then click Run as administrator. If the User Account Control dialog box appears, confirm that the action it displays is what you want, and then click Continue.
  2. At the command prompt, type cd /d %systemroot%\system32\config, and then press ENTER.
  3. Type dir sam, and then press Enter. The command output should display a file named SAM, and there should be at least 10,024 or more free bytes reported in the last line of the output. If there are not enough free bytes reported, remove unnecessary files from the Systemroot drive.
  4. Close the command prompt.
  5. Open Registry Editor. To open Registry Editor, click Start. In Start Search, type regedit, and then press ENTER. If the User Account Control dialog box appears, confirm that the action it displays is what you want, and then click Continue.
  6. Expand the registry path HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SAM, and ensure that there is a SAM registry key that is subordinate to that registry path. If the key is not present, restart the computer.

Database Commit

Active Directory