Microsoft KB Archive/276424

= Behavior of SAM Account Names and UPN Suffixes Containing At Signs =

PSS ID Number: 276424

Article Last Modified on 10/11/2002

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The information in this article applies to:


 * Microsoft Windows 2000 Server
 * Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server
 * Microsoft Windows 2000 Datacenter Server

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This article was previously published under Q276424





SUMMARY
If you create a user whose Security Accounts Manager (SAM) account name contains the at sign (@), or if you specify a User Principal Name (UPN) suffix which contains the at sign, you may encounter unexpected behavior.



MORE INFORMATION
Active Directory automatically behaves as if there is an at-sign delimiter between the SAM account name, and the UPN suffix in a UPN. Therefore, if you specify either a UPN suffix, or a SAM account name that contains an at sign, you may experience unexpected behavior in the Active Directory administration tools, or authentication problems.

Account names with an at-sign can logon only when logging on with the full UPN logon format. If the user name is &quot;a@b&quot;, then the user must logon as &quot;a@b@domain-name&quot;.

Logging on with just the username &quot;a@b&quot; will fail because in some cases Windows may misinterpret the domain name when it is parsing a user's UPN, which can result in an unsuccessful authentication.

Microsoft does support user accounts with an at sign in the SAM account name; the NTLM and Kerberos authentication protocols support such names, and this name syntax is supported at the API level. However, such user names are similar in syntax to a UPN, and some user interfaces might display undesired behavior when they encounter these types of user names. For example, the logon dialog makes the Domain box unavailable if an at sign is typed in the user name field. This will require a UPN-style logon for any user whose user name includes an at sign.

Additional query words: user principal

Keywords: kbenv kbinfo KB276424

Technology: kbwin2000AdvServ kbwin2000AdvServSearch kbwin2000DataServ kbwin2000DataServSearch kbwin2000Search kbwin2000Serv kbwin2000ServSearch kbWinAdvServSearch kbWinDataServSearch

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