I've seen this answer before. It works, but is totally not necessary. Go to the host giving the error. Either delete or comment out the pass4SymmKey in the general section. Restart the host and it will generate a new key. The most likely issue is that the key has become corrupted. I did this on one of our indexers in a cluster having this very issue. It contacted the LM immediately without issue. The reason setting the password in the clear and re-starting works is that it re-hashes the pass4SmmKey. This is what fixes the issue, not the fact that they are the same. Now the situation is different for Search Head Clusters and Index clusters. Under those situations the pass4Symmkey of the each cluster must be the same for that cluster. ... View more