Sunday, June 30, 2013

Resolution: Error during encryption or decryption. System error code 997 in SharePoint

I was recently ran into an issue in SharePoint where my Central Administration web app disappeared. When I tried to redeploy Central Administration, I was confronted with the error below.

An exception of type System.ArgumentException was thrown.  Additional exception information: Error during encryption or decryption. System error code 997.

Everything I saw online said the only option was to create a new config database. Personally, I thought that seemed a bit extreme. Well, I found a better option that worked for me, and will probably work for you too.