Hi Frosty,

Thank you for contacting Microsoft Online Community Support. This is Mark.
I'm glad to assist you with the issue.

Since the password  is saved as hashed value in the sysxlogins table, it is
not allowed for us to retrieve it's original value; and in the stored
procedure sp_addlinkedsrvlogin, if we set the @rmtpassword as hashed value,
SQL Server will consider the hashed value as the remote password of the
linkedserver login; and then the remote password of the linkedserver login
will be changed.  For example:

the original  remote password of the linkedserver login is '123456'
the value '123456'  will be saved as hashed value in the sysxlogins table.
like
'0x1B654275B2AF870DFC056FF856075F19E353E34717DF11D2A3EBD1C0953C94F7096D4F651
8C7840DEEE5805484003ABD8418940D424DA647503FA416CA6A4A7608CBF06B88AD7DED'

If we run the following, SQL Server will consider the hashed value as the
remote password of the linkedserver login.
sp_addlinkedsrvlogin  @rmtsrvname = 'rmtsrvname' ,
    @useself = 'FALSE' ,
    @locallogin = 'locallogin',
    @rmtuser = 'rmtuser' ,
    @rmtpassword =
'0x1B654275B2AF870DFC056FF856075F19E353E34717DF11D2A3EBD1C0953C94F7096D4F651
8C7840DEEE5805484003ABD8418940D424DA647503FA416CA6A4A7608CBF06B88AD7DED'

Besides, the reason why we can use sp_help_rev_login to Transfer Logins and
Passwords Between SQL Servers is :
the statement of 'create login' allow the PASSWORD parameter be set as a
hashed value and SQL Server will translate the hashed value into a normal
vaule. There is an article to share with
you:http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms189751.aspx

Based on the above, I sum up the following methods for you to re-create the
linked server on SQL Server 2005
1. if you know every remote password, we can manually insert the value into
the script.

2. if the remote password is unavailable,  I suggest to re-set the password
of the login users on the linked server first and then manually insert the
new value of the password into the script.

Besides, I'm consulting the problem with our development team fro you.
However, based on my experience, they will not do changes regarding the
security consideration.

If you have any questions or concerns, please let me know.

I look forward to your update.

Thanks.

Best regards,
Mark Han
Microsoft Online Community Support
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