Hi, I have a non domained windows 7 running on my laptop. I use this at work: A 'microsoft house' running server 2003 based domains. I have a problem accessing any network 'object' in this environment. I am plaugued with a Windows Security Dialogue which has as it's title: 'Windows Security' The contents of the dialogue are as follows: Enter Network Password Enter your password to connect to: <IP ADDRESS> Looking for credential tiles... [PROGRESS BAR] x Logon failure: uknown user name or bad password. OK/CANCEL buttons. If I'm lucky this box will eventualy ask me for the credentials to access the 'object' after entering details I get access as I expect. The major issue I have is that this dialogue 30% of the time never rasks me for the user n Pass! it just sits there 'Looking' Is there any way to turn this 'Looking for credential tiles...' dialogue off. and have the OS just ask me for the user and Pass, It's quite fraustrating: I know the password so why do I have to wait for minutes at a time, currently I am staring at one of these dialogues as I write this post. it's been looking now for at least 10 minutes, how long should it take before windows realises it's not a sentiant being and really can't look for anything.... please windows just ask me for the details... best regards to all John.

Hi John, Thank you for posting in Technet. Since your Windows 7 computer is not a domain member, when you accessing resources on the server, it should prompt for username and password, Please be assure that you enter a valid domain username and password. The format should be: Domainname/username Password Then, the credential will be saved. The next time when you access the resources, you need to pass the NTLM authentication. However the default levels of NTLM authentication in Windows Server 2003 and in Windows 7 are different. Than may be the root cause. 1. Open gpedit.msc from Start Search box. Then locate to the following policy. 2. Computer Configuration\Windows Settings\Security Settings\Local Policies\Security Options\Network security: LAN Manager authentication level 3. Please change “Send LM & NTLM - use NTLMv2 session security if negotiated”. Hope it will resolve the issue. Arthur Xie TechNet Subscriber Support in forum If you have any feedback on our support, please contact tngfb@microsoft.com. Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

Hi, Sorry for the delay in getting back: I am on hliday for the next couple of weeks and thus removed from the environment which produces the issue. I have made the changes you suggested but won't know how that affects things untill I get back to work. thanks again... john.

Hi John, When you can work on this issue, please confirm whether my suggestion works. If the issue still occurs, please unmark my reply and I will follow up with you. Arthur Xie TechNet Subscriber Support in forum If you have any feedback on our support, please contact tngfb@microsoft.com.Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

Hi Arthur, I tried your suggestion as I said, I have had to VPN into work on my time off and it would appear that the change to group policy you suggested has made no difference, I had to wait for ten minutes for the 'searching dialogue' to give it up for (morph into) a proper dialogue asking me for the USER and Pass word required to access the server that had the log files I needed. All I want is to have windows NOT search. Can it be turned off completely, so that I am asked imediately for USR n PASS? Besides, I don't think I have seen it once find what ever it is looking for: even if I go to credential manager and clear out the cache, it still spends ages searching, for what? I deleted the cache?! (didn't I)... regards, John.

I don't know the solution, but the information here narrows the problem. Once upon a time several days ago, I was happily running Office 2007 home/student and a standalone Outlook 2010 on a Lenovo desktop Vista Pro and a Lenovo tablet Windows 7. On both, Outlook profiles were configured to open the same Exchange mailbox provided by a commercial Exchange mailbox service (Sherweb). Every time I opened Outlook, I was challenged for a password. Unlike John, who started this thread, neither of my computers has ever touched, smelled, heard or tasted a Windows domain. Their entire lives have been spent as standalone computers on a residential LAN connected to an Internet provider's router. Only the following changed: I installed Office 2010 home/student on both machines. In both cases Microsoft (which I used to have a high opinion of) installed trial versions of of Outlook 2010 on top of my standalone non-trial version of Outlook 2010. So I reinstalled the non-trial version on both machines. I don't think that trial version of Outlook is connected to this credential problem. After those changes, the Windows Vista Pro desktop Lenovo worked fine just as before, except that now it does not challenge me for a password when I open Outlook. I can no longer use Outlook on my Windows 7 tablet Lenovo because Windows Security says it is "looking for credential tiles." Nothing ever happens beyond that. The only way I can even open Outlook is by creating a profile with no Exchange mailbox. Since Outlook 2010 was working fine before the Office 2010 installation, Office 2010 had to have added some component that is not part of Outlook that is preventing Outlook from opening an Exchange profile on the Windows 7 tablet and is allowing Outlook to open without entering a password on an indentical Exchange profile on the Vista Pro desktop. The Lenovo tablet has a security related application called "Touchsmart" that inserts itself between me and Windows when I log into Windows. The Lenovo desktop does not have that. So it's conceivable that it's related. This is not a software corruption issue since I have tried various combinations of uninstalling and reinstalling the standalone Outlook 2010 and the Office 2010 suite in different sequences and in various configurations. If anyone is interested in the personal tragedies of these technical issues, I must begin a long trip in three days with no working portable computer because Microsoft Office put some component on my computer called a credential tile that I cannot find and cannot eliminate and nothing I can find documents what a credential tile is, where it is, how to fix it, what controls it or what part of Office 2010 put it on my computer. (If I knew that last fact, I might be able to reinstall the suite with that component turned off.)

You can manually create a credential in Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Credential Manager. Please click “Windows Credentials” and enter the correct username and password of your domain account. After doing so, when you access network shares in the domain this credential can be found and used, you do not need to enter them manually. Does it help? I assume the issue occurs when you access things via SharePoint in IE. Is that correct? If so, there is a similar discussion in the following thread. IE8 'looking for credential tiles' which it never finds and never recovers from - when connecting to a secure SharePoint site. Hope it helps.Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

Thanks. That helps. I didn't know those were the "tiles" Window Securoty was looking for. But that doesn't solve the problem. The credentials there are correct. My problem is opening Outlook with an Exchange mailbox profile. The problem is Windows Security cannot find the tile and cannot recognize the futility of it's search. And then there's the problem of no documentation on the process.

Jay, See if the option is set in Outlook to "Always prompt for credentials" Open Outlook 2010 File, Account Settings, Account Settings Click on the Exchange Account you have configured for your email Click Change Click More Settings Click the Security tab Click the check box "Always prompt for logon credentials" Click OK to apply the change, Next, then Finish This will cause you to be prompted for credentials when you Open Outlook. See if this helps for your scenario.

Jay, See if the option is set in Outlook to "Always prompt for credentials" Open Outlook 2010 File, Account Settings, Account Settings Click on the Exchange Account you have configured for your email Click Change Click More Settings Click the Security tab Click the check box "Always prompt for logon credentials" Click OK to apply the change, Next, then Finish This will cause you to be prompted for credentials when you Open Outlook. See if this helps for your scenario.

It does not matter if I have added the correct credential on Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Credential Manager. The system never Identifies the correct tile. even if I clear that credential cache so that there are (or should be) 0 credentials to search. The dialogue in question persistes with a lengthy search, ultimately and if I'm lucky (I had to do a complete reboot sometimes) it will ask me to enter the details. Remeber the point of this thread is about diabling the Searching functionality. I do not want windows to search anything: Just ask me for the user and pass details. Typing is way faster than this searching nonsense.

Is there no-one at microsoft who can help with this issue. I been trying to connect exchange server in my organisation for the two hours now this time and I cannot get past this "£$^%£$^£$" (bad words) dialogue box. I'm almost ready to chuck my laptop out the window. I'm getting really fed up with this please please M$ help us.

H, Sorry fir delay. You may check the cached credentials. They are stored under the following Registry key. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SECURITY\CACHE Please remove all the entries under the branch CACHE. If it does not help, you may try to disable credential cache. Then re-enable it. To disable it, configure the following policy. Computer Configuration\Windows Settings\Local Policies\Security Options\Network access: Do not allow storage of credentials or .NET Passports for network authentication Hope it helps.Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

Hi, Just would like to check how things going. Please feel free to let me know if any information is needed.Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

hi sorry for the delay. i checked the key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SECURITY\CACHE however it was empty. Computer Configuration\Windows Settings\Local Policies\Security Options\Network access: Do not allow storage of credentials or .NET Passports for network authentication did that. i certainly prevents caching, however it does not stop windows from 'looking'! I am begining to think that there is no way of preventing windows security from entering the 'looking' phase. this las week i had an example where i was forced to recreate my outlook profile; to get arround another bizzar issue with outlook replies. having deleted my old outlook profile, i was unable to connect to exchange due to windows security looking for these mystery tiles. i left the dialogue 'looking' for three hours and it would not time out. i solved that particular issue by going home and connecting to my work network via Microsoft VPN client. Outlook connected and I never saw the dialogue, not even breifly. I think the greatest pain about this issue is that there is no button on the security dialogue to abort the 'looking' and no perceivable timeout on the 'looking' phase. Regards, John

Microsoft tech support duplicated the problem trying to connect to mailboxes on Microsoft's own Exchange service @microsoft.com which uses a different configuration and connection method from the Exchange service I was using. So the "looking for credential tiles" problem is not unique to a single Exchange service. And from the comments here, it is not specific to Windows-domain vs. non-Windows-domain. Does anyone have this problem on a machine that does not have some kind of hardware OEM supplied security software like fingerprint readers, login-touchpads, password vaults, etc.? At the top of my list of suspicions is a conflict between Windows Security and some OEM hardware security scheme that leaves Windows looking for credentials in all the wrong places. Of the half-dozen instances I saw scanning the Internet, all were HP or Lenovo laptops with OEM-supplied password handlers of one sort or another or involved machines that were not identified in the discussion. Microsoft has been shuffling me around from tech team to tech team for about a month now. I need a tech-team tech team to diagnose which Microsoft team knows where Windows security expects to find credential tiles and how to either put thiem there or tell Windows where else to look for them.

hi, I have an authen tec inc aes1610 fingerprint reader on my alienware laptop with vitakey software installed. this morning i have removed the vitakey software, uninstalled the authen tec drivers and disabled the hardware in device manager. should this make a difference? Is there anything else I should do; i.e. check for registry entries which may be left behind or related? john.

Removing the biometric fingerprint reader components appear to have resolved this issue for me.

Try using a diferent browser. Mozilla Firefox works for sure. Hope it helps.

"Looking for Credential Tiles" in a popup titled "Windows Security" will happen on PCs running Windows 7 or Vista when a Username/Password substitution program is installed but not fully configured. Many notebooks have face or fingerprint recognition software installed by the manufacturer that will allow the user to store UN/PW combinations. It will detect credential challenges and attempt to authenticate the face/finger before filling in the UN/PW automatically. Unfortunately, the popup is not very helpful and never goes away so it was difficult to track down and is easily mis-diagnosed, but once identified has been the explanation for all subsequent cases I have seen (6 or so) My new Lenovo had a program called VeriFace and I encountered this issue when manually configuring Outlook 2010 using RPC over HTTPS. Once configured, it wanted my Exchange credentials but the signin popup was intercepted and I got the 'looking for credential tiles' popup instead. Once VeriFace was uninstalled I got the signin popup and all was well.