Question

In a nutshell, what I’m trying to do is create a new user, which has the ability to log in.

I have plucked code from various sources, and tried to simplify it. However, I’m hitting a few stumbling blocks.

When I call UserPrincipal.Save() – it gives me an error

‘The directory property cannot be found in the cache’ with an
exception type of.. ‘COMExceptioncrossed a native/managed boundary’.

For some reason, when I run my program directly (not through vs2010) it works fine. So I can get around that !

My main problem though, is that even though everything seems ok, when I try to log in, it comes up with the message ‘loading desktop’ or whatever it is, and then just says ‘logging out’. So it’s almost as if the profile hasn’t been set up correctly.

The return value from the API ‘CreateProfile’ isn’t 0, so maybe that’s causing a problem.

Is there anything else I need to do ?

My Code is…

private void Run(string un, string pw)
{
    UserPrincipal NewUP = CreateUser(un, pw);
    AddGroup(NewUP, "Users");
    AddGroup(NewUP, "HomeUsers");
    CreateProfile(NewUP);
}
private UserPrincipal CreateUser(string Username, string Password)
{
    PrincipalContext pc = new PrincipalContext(ContextType.Machine, Environment.MachineName);
    UserPrincipal up = UserPrincipal.FindByIdentity(pc, IdentityType.SamAccountName, Username);
    if (up == null)
    {
        up = new UserPrincipal(pc, Username, Password, true);
        up.UserCannotChangePassword = false;
        up.PasswordNeverExpires = false;
        up.Save(); // this is where it crashes when I run through the debugger
    }
    return up;
}
private void AddGroup(UserPrincipal Up, string GroupName)
{
    PrincipalContext pc = new PrincipalContext(ContextType.Machine, Environment.MachineName);
    GroupPrincipal gp = GroupPrincipal.FindByIdentity(pc, GroupName);
    if (!gp.Members.Contains(Up))
    {
        gp.Members.Add(Up);
        gp.Save();
    }
    gp.Dispose();
}
private void CreateProfile(UserPrincipal Up)
{
    int MaxPath = 240;
    StringBuilder pathBuf = new StringBuilder(MaxPath);
    uint pathLen = (uint)pathBuf.Capacity;
    int Res = CreateProfile(Up.Sid.ToString(), Up.SamAccountName, pathBuf, pathLen);
}

Answer 1

Strangely, when this is run on a server machine (i.e. not my development machine) it works fine. I’ve got a feeling this is something to do with Windows 7, or my particular installation of it.

Thanks for your suggestions anyway.