使用-Server与-Credential参数调用Get-ADPrincipalGroupMembership命令时的认证异常问题咨询

I’ve seen this exact issue pop up in environments with disjointed domain trusts like yours—let me break down what’s likely happening and how to work around it.

Why This Happens #

There are two key factors at play here:

• Command-specific authentication flow: Unlike Get-ADUser, Get-ADGroup, or Get-ADGroupMember, the Get-ADPrincipalGroupMembership cmdlet uses a different authentication pipeline when targeting remote domains. Even when you specify explicit credentials with -Credential, it may first attempt to use the server’s machine account (from D1) for part of the operation. Since there’s no trust between D1 and D3/D4, this implicit authentication fails, triggering the "user has not been authenticated" error.
• Trust boundary restrictions: Your server is joined to D1, which has no trust relationship with D3 or D4. While other AD cmdlets fully honor the explicit credentials you pass for all query steps, Get-ADPrincipalGroupMembership appears to rely on the server’s domain context for resolving group SIDs or performing secondary lookups—something that’s blocked by the lack of cross-domain trust.

Reproducibility #

I’ve successfully reproduced this behavior in a lab environment with two untrusted domains:

1. Server joined to Domain X, no trust with Domain Y
2. Running Get-ADPrincipalGroupMembership -Identity "userY" -Server "DomainY-DC" -Credential $DomainYCreds throws the exact authentication error you described
3. Switching to the workaround using Get-ADUser -Properties MemberOf followed by Get-ADGroup works perfectly, as each step explicitly uses the target domain’s credentials without relying on the server’s machine context.

Additional Verification Step #

To confirm this is tied to the trust boundary and cmdlet-specific behavior, try running the original Get-ADPrincipalGroupMembership command from a machine joined to D3 or D4 (using local D3/D4 credentials). It should execute without errors, which would rule out any issues with the user account, group memberships, or target domain configuration.

内容的提问来源于stack exchange，提问作者Michael