Mark Russinovich is like a legend… half of the dynamite due that used to be SysInternals. They put out tons of utils for Windows admins. With machine cloning technologies that came of age during the last administrative epoch, and virtualization cloning become commonplace, the NewSID util is probably the most used utility they ever put out. It now seems using this utility has been a pointless exercise.
The reason that I began considering NewSID for retirement is that, although people generally reported success with it on Windows Vista, I hadn’t fully tested it myself and I got occasional reports that some Windows component would fail after NewSID was used. When I set out to look into the reports I took a step back to understand how duplicate SIDs could cause problems, a belief that I had taken on faith like everyone else. The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that machine SID duplication — having multiple computers with the same machine SID — doesn’t pose any problem, security or otherwise. I took my conclusion to the Windows security and deployment teams and no one could come up with a scenario where two systems with the same machine SID, whether in a Workgroup or a Domain, would cause an issue. At that point the decision to retire NewSID became obvious.
Its amazing how what is now common practice (even within Microsoft) was all based on an unconfirmed assumption of a problem that never existed. Quite simply the authority of the source gave the supposed problem and supplied solution their credibility. Nobody, not even Microsoft, ever considered even assessing the validity of the solution… let alone the proposed problem.
I still don’t know what to say. I’m actually scared to stop using it… even though the author himself has confirmed its futility. That kind of clinging to a now dis-proven practice has got to be some kind of psychological phenomenon.
Tags: psychology, software, stupid
