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ERROR_INSUFFICIENT_LOGON_INFO
What ERROR_INSUFFICIENT_LOGON_INFO means
The security context lacks data required by the destination or authentication package. A token can exist and still be insufficient if it contains no reusable credentials, lacks delegation capability, or was created for a logon type that cannot access the target resource.
Where it commonly appears
- Network access from services or scheduled tasks
- Delegation across multiple servers
- Impersonation with incomplete credentials
- Remote access using local-only or restricted tokens
Likely causes
- The process is running under a logon type without network credentials
- Delegation is required but not permitted or configured
- The caller supplied only a username without required credential material
- A token was filtered or credentials were intentionally not cached
- The authentication package cannot satisfy the destination requirements
Diagnostic checklist
- Record the account, logon type, authentication package, impersonation level, and target service
- Compare interactive execution with service or scheduled-task execution
- Check whether the failure occurs only on the second network hop
- Inspect Kerberos tickets and delegation configuration when applicable
- Avoid logging passwords or reusable secrets while collecting diagnostics
Guidance for developers
Request the minimum appropriate logon type and make credential requirements explicit. Do not prompt indefinitely or convert the result to a generic network error. For service-to-service access, prefer managed identities or properly configured service accounts over stored user passwords.
Guidance for administrators
Verify the service account, scheduled-task logon option, SPNs, and delegation policy. Granting broad delegation is not a safe shortcut; configure only the required services.
Example incident
A web service impersonates a user authenticated with a local mechanism and then accesses a database on another server. The impersonation token has no delegatable network credentials, so the second hop returns this code.
Related conditions
Compare with ERROR_LOGON_FAILURE, where supplied credentials are rejected, and ERROR_ACCESS_DENIED, where authentication may be complete but authorization fails.
Operational decision points
The most valuable early step is to confirm a credential context condition and not merely a transient API failure. For ERROR_INSUFFICIENT_LOGON_INFO, the deciding evidence is logon type, authentication package, impersonation level, SPN, delegation path. Preserving this first-occurrence evidence is more useful than increasing retry frequency for investigation sequence 7.
- Impact boundary: identify the exact process, account, device, file, session, host, or connection affected by this result; do not assume the whole machine is in the same state.
- State change required: the next attempt is justified only after the relevant credential context state can differ from the failed attempt.
- Partial outcome: verify whether the operation allocated resources, changed data, sent a request, or modified policy before this result was returned.
- Escalation evidence: preserve logon type, authentication package, impersonation level, SPN, delegation path together with component version and the first preceding failure.
Concrete recovery example
Consider a case where an impersonated service attempted a second network hop without delegatable credentials. Repeating the same call leaves the underlying condition unchanged and produces another this result. The durable response is to obtain the proper logon context without recording secrets. Validation for it should use one controlled operation and inspect both the returned status and the resulting state associated with case 7.
Monitoring and validation
A monitoring rule for it should distinguish first occurrence from repetition, group events by affected object, and correlate them with deployments or configuration changes. The recovery is complete only when the expected credential context state is present and consistent; absence of another log line by itself is not sufficient proof.
Retain the original this result event until validation for investigation case 7 is complete. After it is corrected, verify that no partial or stale artifact specific to remediation sequence 7 remains before declaring recovery complete. This it-specific verification prevents a hidden secondary problem from surviving after remediation step 7.
References
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