MID Server Down - StartupSequencer SEVERE *** ERROR - Could Not Authenticate User

This article provides a possible solution for scenarios where a MID Server is unavailable and shows one or more of the following symptoms:

• The MID Server is in a down state on your instance.
• The MID Server Service is in a running state while viewing Windows Services.
• The MID Server agent log shows the following after restart: 

02/18/19 19:25:14 (298) StartupSequencer SEVERE *** ERROR *** SOAP Request: <SOAP-ENV:Envelope xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:SOAP-ENC="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:tns="http://www.service-now.com/GetMIDInfo" xmlns:m="http://www.service-now.com" xmlns:SOAP-ENV="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" SOAP-ENV:encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/"><SOAP-ENV:Body><m:execute><roles xsi:type="xsd:string">mid_server,soap,soap_script,soap_query,soap_create,soap_delete,soap_ecc,soap_script,soap_update</roles></m:execute></SOAP-ENV:Body></SOAP-ENV:Envelope>
02/18/19 19:25:14 (298) StartupSequencer SEVERE *** ERROR *** SOAP Response: Status code=401, Response body=
02/18/19 19:25:14 (298) StartupSequencer WARNING *** WARNING *** Could not authenticate user 'your.user' on the ServiceNow instance
02/18/19 19:25:14 (298) StartupSequencer SEVERE *** ERROR *** test failure
java.lang.IllegalStateException: User cannot be authenticated or is missing the proper roles. If you have deleted or changed the MID server keystore, and config.xml mid.instance.password value is encrypted, you may need to change this value to plain text (during MID startup, password is re-encrypted using current keystore and written back to mid.instance.password).
at com.service_now.mid.services.StartupSequencer.runTests(StartupSequencer.java:391)
at com.service_now.mid.services.StartupSequencer$Starter.run(StartupSequencer.java:349)

There are several possible causes for this error, one of the most frequent is the presence of more than one username and password in the config.xml file, for example:

<parameter value="admin" name="mid.instance.username"/>
<parameter value="encrypted:*************==" name="mid.instance.password" encrypt="true"/>
<parameter value="admin" name="mid.instance.username"/>
<parameter value="MyPassword" name="mid.instance.password" encrypt="true"/>

1. Find the lines shown above in your config.xml file
   
   • A typical location for this file would be C:\ServiceNow\MIDServer1\agent\config.xml
2. Verify that there is only one entry for mid.instance.username and one entry for mid.instance.password
3. Restart the MID Server