Fix "New transaction cannot enlist in the specified transaction coordinator" on Server 2003 SP2

If you are running a web application using the original ASP technology on Windows Server 2003, you might get this error message once you upgrade to Service Pack 2: “New transaction cannot enlist in the specified transaction coordinator. [-2147168246]“.

The cause for this error is that MSDTC has a setting that requires authentication for distributed transactions, and the upgrade to SP2 might change the setting to required instead of none.

To fix this error, open Component Services and right-click on the My Computer icon and choose properties.

Choose the MSDTC tab and then at the bottom of the window click the Security Configuration button.

In this window, change the setting under Transaction Manager Communication to “No Authentication Required”.

This should resolve this error.

Note that if you have a firewall between the web server and database server then you should ensure that high ports are open between the two machines, along with RPC, as that could also cause the same error.

The Geek is the founder of How-To Geek and a geek enthusiast. This article was written on 06/2/07 and tagged with: Windows

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Comments (8)

1. August 22, 2007 5:29 pm
   adamm

   Thanks for publishing this article. Looks like it has fixed an issue we’ve had with our production server for 3 weeks now!

2. October 23, 2007 4:25 am
   Øyvind

   Thanks a lot! This fixed our problem right away.

3. January 10, 2008 2:55 am
   In hyderabad

   Hi,

   I have the same problem, but it is with a win 2K Server, and it seems the 2K server does not have the security settings that you mentioned. So what could be wrong with the 2k server. Things were working fine till a few weeks back, but all of a sudden we started getting this error for some of the COM components.

4. April 9, 2008 12:30 am
   Mikael Sand

   Hellooooo! Anyone actually stopped to think as to WHY the base setting is Athentication Required? Mabye that is a good idea? Maybe you shouldn’t just turn it off.

   That is all

5. April 22, 2008 3:44 am
   Viswanath

   Really good article

6. May 28, 2008 8:05 am
   Sean

   It worked. Thank you!

7. November 19, 2008 5:21 am
   vivek soni

   Hi,

   I m facing same problem with differant senerio
   using OS —- wondows 2000 professional (This property dialog box not appears in my Os)

   SQL SERVER 2000— both databases on same machine

   please help me out

   Thanks

8. March 29, 2009 4:38 pm
   Rob Sukach

   Thanks – exactly what I needed!