Akshay's Weblog

Enterprise Single Sign-On Service not getting started on BizTalk 2006 R2

Akshay N S — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 07:58:00 GMT

PROBLEM DESCRIPTION

After installing the .NET framework 4.0, I wasn't able to start the Enterprise Single SignOn service for BizTalk 2006 R2. The ENTSSO services were failing with the following error message:

Event Type:   Error
Event Source:   Service Control Manager
Event Category:   None
Event ID:   7023
Description:
The Enterprise Single Sign-On Service service terminated with the following error:
%%2148734720

SOLUTION
This issue can also be repaired by using the regasm tool to re-register the SSOSQL assembly. Regasm.exe is included with the .Net Framework.

1. Open a command window
2. Go to C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727
3. Type: regasm "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Enterprise Single Sign-On\ssosql.dll"

I hope this helps :)

Getting error "The 'Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0' provider is not registered on the local machine"

Akshay N S — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 08:53:00 GMT

PROBLEM DESCRIPTION:

While I was trying to connect to an Access Database from Visual Studio 2010 on my Windows 7 x64 server, I got the following error message,

Server Error in '/myCalendar' Application.

The 'Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0' provider is not registered on the local machine.

Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.

Exception Details: System.InvalidOperationException: The 'Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0' provider is not registered on the local machine.

SOLUTION:

After a detailed research on the above error message, I was able to identify that the 64-bit framework dlls weren’t able to 32-bit versions of the 'Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0' provider modules.

Since I was running Visual Studio on a 64-bit machine, IIS 7 is not (by default) serving 32-bit applications. However, I noticed that the database engine operated on 32-bit. I followed these steps to fix the issue:

1. Open the IIS 7.5 manager and select the application pool corresponding to your web application.

2. Right click the application pool and select ‘Advanced settings’.

3. Select the field ‘Enable 32-bit applications’ and change it to 'true'.

4. Restart your application pool and access your application to fix the error you saw.

Happy debugging!

Did you know? How to connect to Microsoft Access database from a .NET 4.0 application

Akshay N S — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 10:12:00 GMT

Goal:

To write a SQL command that will connect to the Microsoft Access 2010 database in Visual Studio 2010.

Solution:

This can be achieved using the connection string as follows,

OleDbConnection connection = new OleDbConnection("Provider=Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0; Data source=D:\\Database\\myDatabase.accdb; Persist Security Info = False");

I hope this helps.

Did you know? To use the SQL select command based on a value selected from a dropdown list

Akshay N S — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 15:07:00 GMT

Background:

I was looking for a requirement where I needed to use the SQL SELECT command based on a user’s input. In my case, it was a selection made from a DropDownList. This select command will be further used to populate a GridView.

The HTML code is as follows,

<asp:DropDownList ID=" DropDownList1" runat="server">

<asp:ListItem Selected="True">Select a Value..</asp:ListItem>

<asp:ListItem>Value 1</asp:ListItem>

<asp:ListItem>Value 2</asp:ListItem>

<asp:ListItem>Value 3</asp:ListItem>

</asp:DropDownList>

<br/>

<asp:Button ID="TextBox1" runat="server" Text="Search" onclick="TextBox1_Click" />

<asp:GridView ID=" GridView1" runat="server" />

Goal:

To write a SQL command that will select the values from the database based on the input provided in the DropDownList and further populate the GridView.

Solution:

This can be achieved using “ (double quotes) and the + symbol within single quotes as follows,

//Get connection string from Web.Config or declare a SqlConnection

String strConnection = ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings["myConnectionString"];

SqlConnection sqlConn = new SqlConnection(strConnection);

SqlCommand sqlCmd = new SqlCommand("SELECT Field1, Field2 FROM myTable where Field3 = '" + DropDownList1.SelectedValue.ToString() + "' ", sqlConn);

//Populating the Grid View – The code follows below..

I hope this helps.

Breaking Changes in Visual Studio 2010

Akshay N S — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 07:38:00 GMT

Visual Studio 2010 was released by Microsoft yesterday (12^th April 2010). VS 2010 promises a lot of new features. More details of the new features are present in the following articles,

What's New in the .NET Framework 4

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms171868(VS.100).aspx

What's New in Visual Studio 2010

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb386063(VS.100).aspx

What's New in Visual C# 2010

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb383815(v=VS.100).aspx

Security Changes in the .NET Framework 4

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd233103(v=VS.100).aspx

A few of the features I liked very much are listed below. I am very sure that the list will grow in the coming days,

- Dynamic Language Runtime

- Monitoring CPU and memory usage of individual application domains by ETW tracing (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd264810(v=VS.100).aspx)

- Background GC. (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee787088(v=VS.100).aspx)

- In-Process Side-By-Side Applications

- The new Chart control. (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd456632(VS.100).aspx)

- The new type, dynamic (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd264736(v=VS.100).aspx)

- Extensible output caching (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/s57a598e(v=VS.100).aspx#aspnet_core_services)

The walk-throughs are present at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/dd441784.aspx and samples are here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/z9hsy596(v=VS.100).aspx

Welcome to the Visual Studio 2010 world!

Visual Studio IDE hung while switching from Source View to Design View

Akshay N S — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 11:04:00 GMT

PROBLEM DESCRIPTION:

While switching between the design view and the source view in Visual Studio, it was observed that the switching takes around 2-3 minutes to complete. During this while, the IDE was in a hung state.

RESEARCH:

1. We suggested the customer to use DebugDiag and collect a hang dump.

2. I used the windbg tool available with Debugging Tools for Windows. The steps are as follows:

We would need the sos.dll extension to review the dump.

0:000> .load C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\sos.dll

The following command gives the information on how long the thread is being executed.

0:000> !runaway

User Mode Time

Thread Time

0:ce4 0 days 0:00:29.375

7:dc4 0 days 0:00:01.671

Here the longest running thread is thread# 0, which is running for ~30 seconds. The following is the call stack on this thread.

0:000> !clrstack

OS Thread Id: 0xce4 (0)

ESP EIP

0012ee64 7c90e514 [ComPlusMethodFrameStandaloneCleanup: 0012ee64] Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.Interop.IVsTargetFrameworkAssemblies.GetRequiredTargetFrameworkVersionFromDependency(System.String, UInt32 ByRef)

0012ee78 10026bd2 Microsoft.VisualStudio.Toolbox.VsToolboxService+ToolboxItemContainer.GetMinimumRequiredFrameworkVersion(System.Drawing.Design.ToolboxItem)

0012ee90 10026a30 Microsoft.VisualStudio.Toolbox.VsToolboxService+ToolboxItemContainer.EnsureMinimumRequiredFrameworkVersionFormat(System.Windows.Forms.IDataObject, System.Drawing.Design.ToolboxItem)

0012eea0 100269e7 Microsoft.VisualStudio.Toolbox.VsToolboxService+ToolboxItemContainer.get_ToolboxData()

0012eee0 10026653 Microsoft.VisualStudio.Toolbox.VsToolboxService+ToolboxDataObject..ctor(ToolboxItemContainer)

0012eef8 10023ffb Microsoft.VisualStudio.Toolbox.VsToolboxService+ItemManager.PerformAdd(ToolboxItemContainer)

0012ef2c 10024a84 Microsoft.VisualStudio.Toolbox.VsToolboxService+ItemManager+ItemManagerList.Add(System.Object)

0012ef38 6739bd37 System.Drawing.Design.ToolboxService.System.Drawing.Design.IToolboxService.AddToolboxItem(System.Drawing.Design.ToolboxItem, System.String)

0012ef48 47bb2b6a Microsoft.VisualStudio.Design.Toolbox.AutoToolboxManagerService.AddToolboxItem(Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.Interop.IVsHierarchy, System.String, System.Type, System.String, System.String, System.ComponentModel.ToolboxItemFilterAttribute, System.ComponentModel.ToolboxItemFilterAttribute, Boolean)

0012efa0 47bb5fc4 Microsoft.VisualStudio.Design.Toolbox.ProjectAutoToolboxManager.UpdateToolboxItems(Boolean, Boolean, Boolean)

0012f03c 47bb3e37 Microsoft.VisualStudio.Design.Toolbox.AutoToolboxManagerService.RefreshToolboxIfNecessary()

So looking at the call stack we observe that the Visual Studio is trying to load some assemblies from the toolbox.

0:000> kPn 100

The above command will list out the assemblies getting loaded by the toolbox. In this case there were two assemblies that were getting loaded. I am not mentioning the assemblies name to avoid discrepancy.

SOLUTION:

I see two possibilities for resolving this issue based on what assemblies are getting loaded and how important they are.

1. If I don’t need these assemblies, I will just remove them and see if it helps.

2. If they are necessary, extra effort needs to be put on further troubleshooting to identify why these assemblies are causing slowness.

Happy debugging!

Getting error "IIS is not installed or is disabled" during SQL Reporting Services installation

Akshay N S — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 06:05:00 GMT

PROBLEM DESCRIPTION:

One of my customers was trying to install SQL Reporting Services and noticed that he was not able to complete the installation. The IIS feature was disabled during the installation, and it was giving the following error message,

Unable to complete installation as IIS is not installed or is disabled.

FINDINGS:

- The setup log file showed,

Article: IIS Feature Requirement, Result: Warning
Description: IIS is not installed; therefore Report Server feature will be disabled

Action: Install IIS in order for Report Server feature to be enabled

- However we noticed that the IIS was installed properly and working fine.

- We then looked at the pre-requisites for the SSRS installation at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/934164 and checked th pre-requisites one by one.

- We observed that HTTP Redirection was not added during the time of IIS installation.

- After installing this, the SSRS installation went without any issues.

During similar situations, it is very important to check the basics – like in this case, look for the pre-requisites for the SSRS installation. Always review the installation log file to search for the errors.

I hope this helps.

Unable to connect to Remote Desktop Web Connection (TSWeb)

Akshay N S — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 12:05:00 GMT

PROBLEM DESCRIPTION:

My customer was facing issue while installing the Remote Desktop Web Connection ActiveX control on Windows XP SP2.

TROUBLESHOOTING DONE:

- He was using Windows XP SP2 and had installed the Remote Desktop Web Connection : XPSP2 [5,1,2600,2180] from
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=469eee3a-45b4-4b40-b695-b678646a728b&displaylang=en

- But we somehow weren’t able to run the TSWeb even after we followed most of the steps listed in KB 951607. (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951607)

- We later installed SP3 for windows XP and register mstscax.dll after which we were able to use the TSWeb.

MORE INFORMATION:

In Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2), you had to install the Msrdp.ocx file to enable the Terminal Services ActiveX control. Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) already includes this ActiveX control and installs it by using the Mstscax.dll file. By default, this ActiveX control is disabled in Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3).

IE prompting for authentication on Windows 2008 machine due to the DEP feature

Akshay N S — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 03:09:00 GMT

PROBLEM DESCRIPTION:

One of my customers observed that IE 8 is prompting for authentication every time he accesses his aspx page. He is using Single Sign On which takes the credentials of the currently logged in user and logs the application under this context. The issue is observed only on the Windows 2008 machine which had IE 8. Also the customer is trying to login to the SAP J2EE server.

Customer had already set the Login prompt to “login with current user name password” in intranet zone in IE.

FINDINGS:

1. I also confirmed that “Enable Integrated Windows Authentication” is enabled under Advanced tab.

2. From the fiddler logs, I was able to isolate that on the non-working machine Kerberos authentication was failing and the IE falls back on NTLM.

3. Which researching on this issue, I got an article that talk about an issue during logon to the SAP Enterprise Portal (SAP J2EE) server after installing MS09-054. They talk about configuring the SuppressExtendedProtection DWORD under the LSA registry key to 3.

A few articles
http://forums.sdn.sap.com/message.jspa?messageID=8308489

Extended Protection for Authentication

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968389

4. I add the DWORD under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\LSA registry hive.

5. From the netmon logs I was able to identify why the Kerberos authentication was failing. I realized that we are running into the issues mentioned in the following article,

The security principals and the services that use only DES encryption for Kerberos authentication are incompatible with the default settings on a computer that is running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/977321

6. Thus we modified the policies for “Network security: Configure encryption types allowed for Kerberos” option and selected all the six check boxes for the encryption types.

CAUSE

By default, the security settings for DES encryption for Kerberos are disabled on the following computers:

Computers that are running Windows 7
Computers that are running Windows Server 2008 R2
Domain controllers that are running Windows Server 2008 R2

By default, Windows 7 uses Advance Encryption Standard (AES) or RC4 for "encryption types" and for "etypes." The services that are configured for only DES encryption fail unless:

The service is reconfigured to support RC4 encryption or to support AES encryption.
All client computers, all servers, and all domain controllers for the domain of the service account are configured to support DES encryption.

SOLUTION:

The solution to this authentication issue is to follow these 2 steps,
1. Set “SuppressExtendedProtection” to 3
2. Select all the six check boxes for the encryption types under Network security: Configure encryption types allowed for Kerberos option.

Please let me know if this information was useful. See ya!

ASP.NET 2.0 web application crashes with Fatal Execution Engine Error (80131506)

Akshay N S — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:10:00 GMT

My customer is repeatedly seeing the following crash events in the event viewer while running the ASP.NET 2.0 web application on x64 bit machines. This application worked just fine on x32 bit machines.

Event Type: Warning

Event Source: W3SVC

Event Category: None

Event ID: 1011

Description:

A process serving application pool 'ABC' suffered a fatal communication error with the World Wide Web Publishing Service. The process id was '5100'. The data field contains the error number.

Event Type: Error

Event Source: .NET Runtime 2.0 Error Reporting

Event Category: None

Event ID: 1000

Description:

Faulting application w3wp.exe, version 6.0.3790.3959, stamp 45d691cc, faulting module mscorwks.dll, version 2.0.50727.3082, stamp 492b80e2, debug? 0, fault address 0x00000000006cfee9.

Event Type: Error

Event Source: .NET Runtime

Event Category: None

Event ID: 1023

Description:

.NET Runtime version 2.0.50727.3082 - Fatal Execution Engine Error (000006427F44A4EE) (80131506)

SOLUTION

===========

Carlo has already blogged on a similar issue. More details are present at http://blogs.msdn.com/carloc/archive/2009/03/11/fatal-execution-engine-error-on-x64-framework.aspx.

You can collect the crash dumps using adplus (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/286350) and then run the commands used by Carlo in his blog. You can use windbg to run these commands and confirm that the issue is similar in your case. (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/892277)

Please make sure that you are not passing an empty string for parsing to Convert.FromBase64String (or CryptoAPITransform.TransformFinalBlock directly).