CAM-CRP-1280 An error occurred while trying to decrypt using the system protection key

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Product:
Cognos Planning 10.1.1
Cognos BI 10.1.1
Windows 2008 R2 server

Symptom:
In your environment, you have installed Cognos product in VMWARE servers, and now you want to make a test environment from you working Cognos product environment.
You have copied the Cognos Windows server image to a new VMWARE image on other VMWARE host machine. You have renamed the Windows server that run the Cognos products and give it a new IP address. When you start Cognos Configuration you get a error.
When you press OK, Cognos configuration exit.

Error message:
CAM-CRP-1280 An error occurred while trying to decrypt using the system protection key. Reason: javax.crypto.BadPaddingException: Given final block not properly padded

Solution:
Export a unencrypted cogstartup.xml file from the previous Cognos Configuration program in you original Cognos server.
Start Cognos Configuration on the old server.
Select File – Export As
Enter a name of the file e.g. backup_cogstartup.xml and save the file to d:\
Copy that backup_cogstartup.xml file to you new Cognos server, to folder c:\program files\ibm\cognos\c10\configuration.
Rename the none working the cogstartup.xml file to cogstartup_org.xml.
Replace it with the unencrypted cogstartup.xml file, by rename the backup_cogstartup.xml to cogstartup.xml
On the new Cognos Server, start Cognos Configuration.
When it start, you have to change server name to reflect the new server name inside Cognos Configuration. This to make it work in the new Cognos solution, and not point to old servers.
Also change Content Store connections, so they point to the new database server.

If above does not help to allow you to start Cognos Configuration, you can try this:
Delete the caSerial and cogconfig.prefs files in the configuration directory.
Also delete the three subdirectories: csk, encryptkeypair, and signkeypair.
Start IBM Cognos Configuration again.

If you copy a vmware image with Cognos installed, and change the name of the server, it is many places that need to be updated. So I recommend that you install a fresh Windows 2003 R2 server instead, and then if you have fast dedicated CPU and ram in your system, you install Cognos software again to the new server. That can be a fast way to setup a test environment.