I’m going to start out by saying I don’t know a tremendous amount about this subject. I’ll tell you what I know but I’ll have a bunch of cautionary comments throughout this post. So why am I bothering to tell you? I don’t know about you but one of my least favorite errors is the SSPI Context error. It’s at once vague and complicated and I’m never quite sure what to do about it. So here is a possible cause with a very simple solution.

Windows Hello is a way to log into Windows without your password. Either using a pin, your image, a fingerprint etc. Unfortunately, if you use it it can (does?) cause an SSPI Context error when you try to connect to SQL using Kerberos. Again, not super familiar with it but my best guess is that since you aren’t entering your password you aren’t going to get a Kerberos token. That said I did find a post (link below) that talks about how to set up Windows Hello for Business to fix this issue. I don’t know if that means there is some way to set up regular Windows Hello so it doesn’t cause this issue but there you go.

So how can you tell if this is your problem/fix it if it is? Lock your machine and log in using the password (you’ll have to remove facial recognition to do this from what I’ve seen). If having logged in with your password you no longer have the error then Windows Hello is the problem.

Links with additional information:

Learn about Windows Hello and set it up
How Windows Hello for Business authentication works
Windows Hello for Business PIN and Kerberos