Setting Trace Flag 4616 on SQL Server 2012 Causes SQL Server to reset SA password on restart

Question

Greetings,

      One of our customers has a need to set Trace flag 4616 on start up.  However, they found that each time the SQL Server service is restarted, SQL Server is resetting the sa password.  When the trace flag is removed from the start up, this doesn't occur.  

       I looked for detailed information on what Trace Flag 4616 does and see that it makes server level meta-data visible to application roles.  However, I did not see anything indicating that it would reset the sa password each time SQL Server is restarted.   Is this normal for this trace flag to do this?   If not what could be causing this to occur and can it be disabled?

Thanks

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Lou Davis Software Engineer E2B Teknologies

Answer 1

Hello,

You should file a bug on Microsoft Connect.

https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Alberto Morillo
SQLCoffee.com

Answer 2

Hi e2bLou,

Could you please tell us which release and edition of SQL Server 2012 did you use? On which edition of Operation System did you install it? Have you changed any other properties? 

I tested it with SQL Server 2012 SP3 Enterprise Edition which installed on Windows Server 2012 machine, I didn't meet the same phenomenon. You can try to upgrade SQL Server 2012 to the latest release and try it again.

If you have any other questions, please let me know.

Best Regards,
Teige

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Answer 3

Thanks for the responses, but I just learned from a co-worker that the customer worked with the software vendor that required them to set this trace flag for their software and got the issue resolved.  Not  sure what was changed to correct the problem.  If I find out, I'll post the info here.

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Lou Davis Software Engineer E2B Teknologies