Recently I was working with some search setting configurations and a full MSCryptic error was popping up on one of the SharePoint 2007 server farms. When trying to access the Search settings page in Central Administration’s Shared Services Provider, the SSP gives this error:

"Authentication failed because the remote party has closed the transport stream."

It ends up that it’s an issue with the SSL certificate that is installed on the “Office Server Web Services” IIS instance. Somehow it gets corrupted when:

  • The server that is running Office SharePoint Server 2007 has the query role in a server farm.
  • The server farm was updated with Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 (SP1).
  • The roles of the query server and the index server are not on the same server in the server farm.

Microsoft knows about the issue and has a fix right here:

You cannot browse to an SSL-secured Office SharePoint Server 2007 site or to the Search Settings page for a Shared Services Provider

http://support.microsoft.com/?id=962928