Hi,

I have inherited a sharepoint web part from dotnet Asp.net 2.0 that is
displaying task list in MOSS site. It calls FindAll() to locate a specific security
group, and then enumerates through the group to retrieve the user's
display names.

*Very* intermittently this web part will throw an exception - either
"System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException: The server is not operational" or,
 sometimes, "The authentication mechanism is
unknown". When I say intermittently, I mean very intermittently - it is
fine 60% of the time. There doesn't seem to be any pattern to the
errors .
I am really hoping someone can help, this is proving very difficult to
fix as it is so irregular.


Code

 private DirectorySearcher GetDirectoryObject()
        {
            DirectoryEntry oDE = new DirectoryEntry("LDAP://MYDOMAIN", "username", "pwd", AuthenticationTypes.Secure);
            DirectorySearcher deSearch = new DirectorySearcher();
            deSearch.SearchRoot = oDE;
            return deSearch;
        }

        public string GetProperty(SearchResult searchResult, string PropertyName)
        {
            if (searchResult.Properties.Contains(PropertyName))
            {
                return searchResult.Properties[PropertyName][0].ToString();
            }
            else
            {
                return string.Empty;
            }
        }


        public string GetDept(string username)
        {

            DirectorySearcher deSearch = GetDirectoryObject();
            deSearch.Filter = "(&(objectClass=user)(SAMAccountName=" + username + "))";
            deSearch.SearchScope = SearchScope.Subtree;
            string UserDept = "";
            foreach (SearchResult results in deSearch.FindAll())
            {
                UserDept = GetProperty(results, "userPrincipalName");

            }

            return UserDept;
        }