Common Installation Issues

This section lists some of the common problems you may encounter while installing Reporting Services. Suggested solutions are provided to help you resolve these problems.

The Setup Error Screen

If the setup program encounters an error during the setup process, it will display a screen alerting you to the error and ask you how to proceed. In most cases, you’ll see a Retry button and an Ignore button, along with the other choices at the bottom of the screen.

Retry

Any computer professional worth their salt will not believe an error message the first time it occurs. Therefore, your first step in troubleshooting an installation error is to click Retry and see if the error screen returns.

Manually Start IIS

The setup program stops and restarts the IIS service (called “World Wide Web Publishing” in the Services window) during the installation process. If the IIS service does not restart properly, a setup error will occur. If you receive a setup error, check the status of the IIS service as follows:

1. Go to the Control Panel and select Administrative Tools.

2. Double-click Services.

3. In the list of services, find the entry for World Wide Web Publishing.

If the word “Started” does not appear in the Status column for the World Wide Web Publishing service, do the following:

1. Right-click the entry for World Wide Web Publishing.

2. Select Start from the context menu.

3. Once the service has started, close the Services window.

4. On the setup error screen, click Retry.

Ignore

If neither of the previous processes got rid of the error screen and the Ignore button is present, select it so that the setup will continue and, hopefully, run to completion. Once the setup is complete, you can use the information provided here and through other sources to correct the problem and get your installation up and running.

Administrative Rights

One of the biggest problems with the Reporting Services setup is not using login accounts that have the appropriate rights. If you encounter an error during installation, refer back to the “Login Accounts” section of this chapter and make sure you are using login accounts that have the appropriate rights.

If you discover you received a setup error because one of the login accounts you used was not adequate to the task, remove the failed installation of Reporting Services and try again. To remove the failed installation, select Add or Remove Programs from the Control Panel and choose to remove Reporting Services.

Server Components Not Shown on the Feature Selection Screen

If you are performing an installation that requires the server components, but they are not present on the Feature Selection screen, this is probably an indication that you are not up-to-date on your Windows service packs. Reporting Services is finicky about this. As stated earlier, the Reporting Services installation process requires Service Pack 4 if you are using Windows 2000 and Service Pack 1a if you are using Windows XP Professional.

If you encounter this problem, cancel the installation, install the latest service pack for your version of Windows, then start the installation process again.

Installation Error 1603

You may receive Error 1603 if you are doing a Report Designer Installation of Reporting Services on a computer that is not running Internet Information Services. The Reporting Services installation looks for a user called ASPNET. This user is created by the .NET Framework installation on computers running IIS. If there is not IIS running, no ASPNET user is created.

This problem is solved by creating a local user called ASPNET on the computer where you are doing the Report Designer Installation. This user does not need to have any particular password or any particular rights on the computer. For a Report Designer installation, a user with this name simply needs to exist on the computer.

Installation Error 2755

You may receive Error 2755 if you are installing Reporting Services using a Terminal Server session. This will occur if you are using a mapped drive to access the setup files. The Windows Installer service that actually performs the setup operation is running in a different Windows session, so it may not have the same drive mappings. The error occurs because certain files needed by the installer cannot be found.

To remedy this problem, use a UNC path to access the setup files rather than a mapped drive. Alternatively, you may put the installation CD in a drive that is local to the computer on which you are performing the installation or copy the setup files to a drive local to that computer.

Manually Activating Reporting Services

In some cases, the only problem with the Reporting Services installation is that it did not activate properly at the end of the setup process. You can try to manually activate Reporting Services to remedy this problem. In situations where you ignored a setup error and the setup ran to completion, but Reporting Services does not appear to work, you should try a manual activation.

To manually activate Reporting Services, do the following:

1. Open a command window. (One way to open a command window is to select Start | Programs | Accessories | Command Prompt.)

2. Change to the C: drive if you are not already there.

3. Type the following and then press ENTER:

   cd \Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\80\Tools\binn

4. Type the following on one line, where {username} and {password} represent a login account that has administrative rights, and then press ENTER:

   RSActivate –c "c:\Program Fields\Microsoft SQL  Server\MSSQL\Reporting Services\Report  Server\RSReportServer.config" –u {username} –p {password}

The RSActivate utility program will attempt to activate the Reporting Services installation specified by the RSReportServer.config file. The results of running RSActivate will be displayed in the command window.

Making the Reports Website Available Outside of Your Network

The Reporting Services setup program assumes that you will be accessing the Reports website using an address similar to http://MyRSServer/Reports. This works fine inside your network, but it probably isn’t going to work well if you want to make the Reports website available from outside your network. For instance, if you want to allow users to access the Reports website using an address such as http://www.MyRSServer.com/Reports, you will need to make a change to the configuration created during setup.

To make this change, you will need to find the RSWebApplication.config file. The default location for this file is C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL\ Reporting Services\Report Manager. Open the RSWebApplication.config file with a text editor. The first few lines of the file will be similar to the following:

<Configuration>   <UI>    <ReportServerUrl>http://MyRSServer/ReportServer</ReportServerUrl>   </UI> 

Replace the text between <ReportServerUrl> and </ReportServerUrl> with the complete address that should be used to access the Reports website. In our example, the modified RSWebApplication.config file would look like this:

 <Configuration>   <UI>    <ReportServerUrl>http://www.MyRSServer.com/ReportServer</ReportServerUrl>   </UI>

You will need to restart the IIS service for this change to take effect. Do the following:

1. Go to the Control Panel and select Administrative Tools.

2. Double-click Services.

3. In the list of services, find the entry for World Wide Web Publishing.

4. Right-click this entry and select Restart from the context menu.

5. Close the Services window.

Installing on a SharePoint Server

Reporting Services can be installed on a server that is running SharePoint Services. However, you may encounter activation errors during the installation process. You can ignore these errors and complete the installation. Once the installation is complete, follow the steps in the Reporting Services ReadMe file under “Installing Reporting Services with Windows SharePoint Services” to properly activate Reporting Services.

The Installation Log File

If none of these suggestions solves your installation issues, you may want to consult the installation log file for more information. This log file is a bit tricky to track down. The reason it is hard to find is because it is created inside a CAB file. This makes it easier to send the file to Microsoft support when you ask them to help solve an installation problem. It may make things more efficient for Microsoft support, but it makes it tough for you, if you are looking for a LOG extension as opposed to a CAB extension.

The default location for the log file is:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\80\RS Setup Bootstrap\Log\RSStp_.cab