Fix For Weird Error When Installing SQL Reporting Services 2000

We did an install of CRM Professional the other day where we got an error that SQL Reporting Services activation failed during the install. We ignored that error and went on with the installation, figuring we'd install SQL RS afterwards.

So when I went to install SQL RS (or SRS - which one is the preferred abbreviation?), since I was working remotely and the CRM install CD was still in the server, I navigated to the SRS folder inside the CRM installation directory and clicked setup.exe. This gave me a warning that the .NET framework 1.1 was not installed and that Visual Studio .NET 2003 was not installed.

Now I know that VS.NET wasn't installed - and wasn't needed, but the 1.1 framework WAS installed. In fact 1.1, 2.0 and 3.0 frameworks were all installed. (Hint) Though I've never had a problem running these frameworks side-by-side on a CRM server. CRM was working normally - and for a sanity check I went back into IIS to make sure. I also verified that the Default website was using 1.1. So why wasn't the SQL RS installation seeing this? If I ignored these warnings, the installation completed with no other errors, but the virtual directories and folders for SQL RS weren't created.

Fortunately, I found this post on Lance's Whiteboard: http://weblogs.asp.net/lhunt/archive/2004/04/05/107950.aspx which described the problem. To summarize:

There was a registry key that sets what version of the .NET framework new sites/applications will use in IIS by default. Even though you can go in and set the Default website to use an older version of the framework, when you install an application into that website, it might not like the registry key that says it should use the 2.0 framework by default.

The key is \\HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\ASP.NET\RootVer and you need to change the value to the correct version of 1.1.4322.xxx that you have installed. (To find out the exact version, you can go into C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322 and right click on the aspnet_wp.exe and choose Properties and look at the version.)

After a reboot, the SQL RS installation still threw a warning up that Visual Studio .NET 2003 was not installed - but ignoring that, that installation went through successfully. Had to then create the folder in the SQL Reports website for the CRM installation (matching the name to the Org name in Deployment Manager) and then use the publishreports.exe to get the canned reports into CRM.