You get into work one morning and find a server has crashed. No worries, just restart it.

You have a look at the server and find out a service is not running and try and restart it and get this error message.

Error 1057: The account name is invalid or does not exist.

This is one of those annoying little errors you might only see once. So how do you fix it?

1. Firstly, check the obvious one first. Is the account that the service uses valid? Check that it is not disabled or deleted. It is also useful to check with any other support staff to make sure they did not change the password.
2. So, now you have confirmed that the account details are correct, but it still won’t start. Make sure the DNS server entries in the network settings are right. If you have more than one DNS server swap the precedence. Then re-enter the service account details and password. Try and start the service.
3. If the above two steps have failed do the follow. Under the user profile of the service account in Documents and Settings traverse to Application Data\Microsoft\Credentials and then delete the sub-folder. Now re-enter the service account details in the service logon section and start the service.

If these don’t help then you are probably looking are a re-install of the software or operating system.

Happy troubleshooting.