Unable to Initialize TDSE object. Error Code: 0x80040302 (-2147220734)

Question

I am setting up Tridion R 5.3 content Manger server on Win 2003 Server. My Windows server is not having Active directory service enabled. The Impersonation user that I have set in Tridion Configuration Manager is

WORKGROUP\mtsuser

since the 2003 server is not under any Domain. Now whenever I try accessing console on //localhost/ and enter my credentials for mts user. The following error is shown with Mesaage on Console reading as "You dont have permission to access R 5.3 contact Administrator."

Event Type: Warning
Event Source: Kernel
Event Category: Security
Event ID: 200
Date: 2/15/2013
Time: 2:11:23 PM
User: WORKGROUP\mtsuser
Computer: WORKGROUP
Description:
Unable to Initialize TDSE object.
Access is denied for the user WORKGROUP\mtsuser.
Error Code:
0x80040302 (-2147220734)
Call stack:
SystemBLST.GetUserContext
SystemBLST.IBLSecurityST_GetUserContext
TDSE.Initialize

Please help In dire need of a solution....

Answer 1

If your machine is not under domain then where does WORKGROUP\mtsuser come from? Who is managing its credentials? I think you should use local machine name\mtsuser and manage credentials locally. Besides you are not supposed to be able to access CME with MTSUser. This user is system user and is only to be used by the system. Also, as you are on 5.3 version, you should check documentation and make sure you've granted all the necessary rights and permissions to this user.

And you should really consider one of the supported versions of Tridion

Answer 2

1. MTSUser should not be set as an impersonation user, this is your SYSTEM account
2. "Access is denied" means literally that the user doesn't have permissions for a given action. Maybe it's not an allowed Tridion user, since you don't have access to Tridion I'd recommend looking at the TRUSTEES table, and finding the MTSUser account there. If it doesn't match, then it certainly will not work. Add a record to the TRUSTEES table with the correct information.
3. As user978511 states, 5.3 is pretty old (early 2008), and not officially supported anymore, but I doubt you can do anything about that.
4. The impersonation account should be the same account that runs the application pool in IIS - by default this is Network Service