I cannot add VMware sensors because of "wrong" password although it is correct. What can I do?

This article applies as of PRTG 22

While trying to add a VMware Virtual Machine (SOAP) sensor receiving the following error message:

Registering cannot be completed because of a wrong username or password.

Resolving the "wrong" credentials issue when adding VMware sensors

Before you can add VMware sensors to PRTG, you must provide credentials for VMware in the settings of the device that you want to add the sensor to and that represents your target VMware server. Usually, it works if you use the credentials of a user with sufficient rights (for example, read-only) to obtain statistics from VMware, but note the following:

Do not use special characters in single sign-on (SSO) passwords.

Otherwise, you will not be able to add the sensor at all because the Add Sensor dialog aborts with an error message about an incorrect username or password. The following special characters do not work in SSO passwords for vCenter servers:

• Non-ASCII characters (including the euro ( € ) sign, for example)
• Ampersand ( & )
• Semicolon ( ; )
• Double quotation mark ( " )
• Single quotation mark ( ' )
• Circumflex ( ^ )
• Backslash ( \ )
• Percent ( % )
• Angle brackets ( < > )

Change the password for your vCenter accordingly and use this password in the settings of the parent device in PRTG.

Note: This issue is not caused by PRTG but is a known bug of VMware. For details, see the VMware Knowledge Base article vSphere 5.5 Single Sign-On [email protected] password issues (2060637).