Fix: The Trust Relationship Between This Workstation And The Primary Domain Failed

Consider a scenario. You’re using Remote Desktop to access your workstation. Then you received some authentication error and Remote Desktop no longer works. To solve this issue, you configured Network Level Authentication as mentioned in this article. In the mentioned guide, you unchecked Require user authentication for remote connections by using Network Level Authentication option. After this, the Remote Desktop could connect but you received The trust relationship between this workstation and the primary domain failed.

In this article, we’ll share you how to fix this error so that Remote Desktop works without any issue.

FIX: ‘The Trust Relationship Between This Workstation And The Primary Domain Failed’ In Windows 11/10

Fix 1: General Suggestions

1. Try to use System Restore point, in case if you’ve made changes to system. See if restoring to previous point solves this issue.

2. Try connecting the Remote Desktop via local user account with administrative privileges.

3. Make sure you installed latest Windows Updates.

If issue still persists, refer FIX 2.

Fix 2: Reconnect Computer To Domain

One of the common reason you may face this issue is because of two machines with same name in the domain. The trust relationship will allow single machine with its name and no duplicate machine. So to deal with this issue, you need to disconnect the machine from domain first. Then you can rejoin the machine to get this resolved. The reason behind this solution is that every domain member has a secure channel with domain controller (DC). If this secure channel breaks out, the member machine won’t be able to connect with DC. The condition to prevent breaking of secure channel is member has to change its password in every 30 days. The password has be synced successfully with DC otherwise secure channel is broken and hence this issue occurs.

By reconnecting the computer to domain, the member connection to secure channel is established and possibility of duplicate member is eliminated. You can refer this Microsoft support article to reconnect computer to domain. The support article is written for Windows 7 (as of this writing) but the steps can still be applied for later OS such as Windows 11/10.

We believe after reconnecting computer to domain, issue will no longer be present.

Hope this helps!

Originally released on Aug 24, 2019. Last updated for Windows 11.