Exchange 2016 OWA Fails to Login

Lindsay Leeds
3 min readApr 14, 2022

And how to fix it

The Problem

I had to set up a forms based authentication Exchange 2016 server for OWA so that hourly workers at my company could log into at a kiosk.

Unfortunately after they logged in, they were greeted with this error message:

“Something went wrong. We can’t get that information right now. Please try again later. X-FEServer MyServer”

I have blurred the server name for X-FEServer, but it was the short name of the Exchange server.

Looking at the Logs

Looking for answers, I discovered there were log files in: C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\Logging\HttpProxy\Owa

I found an Exception error in the logs corresponding to my failed login attempts.

UnexpectedException=Microsoft.Exchange.Diagnostics.ExAssertException: ASSERT: HMACProvider.GetCertificates:protectionCertificates.Length<1

It was part of a much larger line of logging:

2022-04-14T19:01:56.678Z,84199fbc-fc5c-4ea3-9848-9199faffe6b1,15,1,2308,27,,Owa,localhost,/OWA/auth.owa,,FBA,true,MYDOMAIN\HealthMailboxa93375b,,Sid~S-1-5-21-448539723-2052111302-1801674531-102098,AMProbe/Local/ClientAccess,127.0.0.1,MYSERVER,500,,,POST,,,,,WindowsI…

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Lindsay Leeds

I am an IT guy by trade, with interests in investing and personal finance.