Cannot Complete Your Request" or "You cannot log on at this time" or "Unable to Start" error when logging into VCS
Introduction
This article was written to help users or support staff be able to fix the error "Cannot Complete Your Request" or "You cannot log on at this time" when logging into Virtual Computer Services (VCS).
Applicability
This article applies to anyone who uses or supports VCS.
Details
After signing into VCS with your username and password, you may be greeted with the one of the following error messages.
There are a few reasons these errors may come up:
1) The web browser being used to access VCS is trying to use an expired or stale web cookie. So clearing the cookies from your web browser will likely fix the issue.
However, since cookies are used for things like online shopping, staying logged into websites, etc., you may want to only delete the cookies pertaining to the VCS website.
2) This issue has also been observed when characters from other languages are used in the password or username.
3) This could be a cause of a service outage with VCS.
Clearing up stale or expired Cookies
Google Chrome
1. Click on the 3 dot button in the top right.
2. Click Settings.
3. Click on Security and Privacy.
4. Click on Cookies and other site data.
5. Click on See all cookies and site data.
6. Scroll down until you find vcs.med.ualberta.ca and/or vcsmfa.med.ualberta.ca. (list is alphabetical order).
7. To delete the cookies for those site(s), click the trash can icon. If both show up as listed above, then delete both entries.
Microsoft Edge (similar to Chrome)
1. Click on the 3 dot button in the top right
2. Click on Settings
3. Click on Cookies and Site permissions in the left hand menu
4. Click on Manage and delete cookies and site data
5. Then click on See all cookies and site data
6. Scroll down till you find ualberta.ca, then click on the down arrow to show the child items within, and you'll see vcs.ualberta.ca, and a trash icon, that you can click on to remove those cookies.
Safari
1. Click on Safari in the menu bar
2. Click on Preferences...
3. Click on Privacy tab
4. Then click on Manage Website Data...
5. Scroll down to ualberta.ca, click it, and then click on Remove
6. Click on Done.
Non English characters in the username or password field
During the login process to VCS, there are two different systems used for authentication. When the first system passes the username and password over to the second system, non-English characters may break this hand off and throw the error. One way to verify this is to check the computer being used to sign into VCS to see if there are additional keyboard layouts being used. Additionally, you can test with a different account that you know works to see if the issue is specific to a certain user account. Another option is to reset the password to a temporary one, and test. After a little bit of trial and error, you should be able to find a solution that works.
Keywords: vcs,login,cannot,complete,your,request,logon,at,this,time,signon,website,error,