PSA: Cannot open Credentials Manager

I blew several INCREDIBLY frustrating hours trying to troubleshoot issues installing Google Workspace Sync and Microsoft Office 365 on multiple Windows 10 workstations today.

Searching for “failed to create profile” errors when setting up a Google Workspace Sync user for Outlook frequently nets you advice to fire up Windows’ Credential Manager and delete rogue credentials. The same advice often pops up for the dreaded “Trusted Platform Module Has Malfunctioned” error when attempting to register a freshly-downloaded Office 365 application to a user.

Unfortunately, trying to open Credential Manager also fails on affected PCs, with the error “An error occurred while performing this action: 0x80090345.” This was what finally led me to the workaround to the single issue affecting both Office365 setup and Google Workspace Sync setup.

First, open regedit on the affected PC. Then navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Cryptography\Protect\Providers\df9d8cd0-1501-11d1-8c7a-00c04fc297eb, and create a new registry DWORD value ProtectionPolicy, and set it to 1.

After creating the new DWORD and setting it to 1, restart your PC, and opening Credential Manager should then work fine. Once Credential Manager is open, delete anything you find in there, then register your Office365 apps and/or set up your Google Workspace Sync user.

That was four hours of my life I’m never getting back. Hope you found your answer sooner than I did!

Published by

Jim Salter

Mercenary sysadmin, open source advocate, and frotzer of the jim-jam.

2 thoughts on “PSA: Cannot open Credentials Manager”

  1. Thank you for posting this! I wasted several days on this problem. Even going so far as to re-install windows from scratch. After the re-install the problem was still there. I should have known it had something to do with the TPM module as that would be unaffected by the install. Anyways, your post fixed me right up! Thanks again.

  2. Thank you SO much for this. I have run into this issue several times now and all the other solutions do not work. As soon as I couldn’t open the credential manager, I knew this would work, and it did!

    I wish I could buy you a cake or….something.

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