Category: Troubleshooting

Sitecore, Sitecore Rocks, Troubleshooting, Visual Studio

Getting “Error: this template attempted to load component assembly Sitecore.Rocks.TemplateWizard…” ? Try this…

Jared Meredith

At some point in your early Sitecore career you will likely encounter the following error:

sitecorerockserror

Perhaps you tried uninstalling and reinstalling Sitecore Rocks but still had the issue? Here’s what happened in my battle with troubleshooting.

So I finally went and found the Sitecore.Rocks.TemplateWizard.dll and copied it to:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\IDE\PublicAssemblies

If you have trouble finding where those assemblies are then look where the extension was installed. For me it was starting here

C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\12.0\Extensions

Once there I browsed the directories until I found it.

(Others I know have had to copy to Visual Studio 10 and 11 as well)

These steps did fix the issue and allowed the template wizard to run when creating a layout.

If you are still receiving other errors after this you may need to also bring in some other files. What was missing was a good number of other dlls:

  • Sitecore.Rocks.Validation.dll
  • Sitecore.Rocks.Validation.Runner.config.xml
  • Sitecore.Rocks.Validation.Runner.exe
  • Sitecore.Rocks.Validation.Runner.exe.config
  • Sitecore.Rocks.VisualStudio.dll
  • Sitecore.Rocks.VisualStudio.pkgdef
  • (and of course Sitecore.Rocks.TemplateWizard.dll)

After copying these out to the folder mentioned above and restarting Visual Studio, my issue was resolved. Hope that helps.

Apache, PHP, Troubleshooting, Web

Stuck On “Cannot Load php7apache2_4.dll into server: The specified module could not be found”? Try this…

Jared Meredith

I recently just performed a PHP upgrade from 5.6.15 to 7.0.1. After doing everything I had suspected I needed to do I received this error in my logs when trying to start Apache:

httpd.exe: Syntax error on line 569 of C:/Program Files (x86)/Apache Software Foundation/Apache24/conf/httpd.conf: Cannot load C:/Program Files (x86)/PHP.7.0.1/php7apache2_4.dll into server: The specified module could not be found.

Here is what I had in that block, bolding the item in question:

LoadModule php7_module "C:/Program Files (x86)/PHP.7.0.1/php7apache2_4.dll"
AddHandler application/x-httpd-php .php
PHPIniDir "C:/Program Files (x86)/PHP.7.0.1/"

Huh??? I checked and double checked and that file was there. After about 2 hours of scratching my head I then found a forum post that clicked for me. You may not be recognizing the .dll file because it has a dependency on the Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2015. Once I downloaded and installed the exe files (located here) then after another restart I started seeing my pages again. Hope it helps.

Active Directory, ADFS, Certificates, Troubleshooting, WAP, Web

Getting Event ID 144 On Your Web Application Proxy When Trying To Connect To ADFS?

Jared Meredith

Perhaps as you were setting up your brand new shiny 2012 R2 Web Application Proxy (WAP) to connect to your 2012 R2 Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS 3.0) server you ran into a 404 error in the web browser followed by this error message in the event viewer logs when trying to do your idpinitiated sign on test from the internet using the WAP DNS URL:

Event ID 144

The Federation Service Proxy blocked an illegitimate request made by a client, as there was no matching endpoint registered at the proxy.

Huh?!?!? Okay, so here is one of the reasons why it is generating: the root part of your DNS you use at the proxy must match the DNS you have on your internal ADFS server.

For example, if you configured your internal federation service name to be different (adfs.internaldomain.com) than the web application proxy name (adfs.yourexternalweb.com) then when the proxy tries to interpret the request it sees the mismatching DNS as an illegitimate request, thus blocking it. And while the WAP will publish various web applications that have different DNS this does not cover the initial configuration of the WAP when it is initially pointed to the internal ADFS server.

So what’s the solution?

Get a DNS entry on your internal domain to point to your internal ADFS server using what you used for the web application proxy. These names MUST match for the WAP to work. If you cannot get a DNS entry on your internal domain to match the DNS on the external domain then my recommendation would be to use your etc/hosts file to point your proxy to your ADFS server.

Once you have the DNS entry or etc/hosts entry in place for your WAP and ADFS server then do the following:

1. Put the adfs.yourexternalweb.com public cert (with private key) on the ADFS server to be used for communications.
2. (Assuming ADFS has already been configured) Remove the adfs role from the ADFS server and do not save the databases and reboot.
4. Install the ADFS role with the new matching Federation Service name (adfs.yourexternalweb.com). Make sure to point to the newly installed certificate. Do not utilize old database information. Create a new WID database.
5. Remove the WAP role from the WAP server.
6. Reboot.
7. Reinstall WAP role and Configure. Once post deployment has completed successfully do NOT create an app for ADFS as it is automatically publishing ADFS as a proxy under the covers.

Hope this helps. Questions are welcome.

CRM, IIS, Troubleshooting

Resolving CRM XRMServices System.ServiceModel.ServiceActivationException Issues With Multiple IIS Site Bindings

Jared Meredith

So if you ever attempt to go from http to https (or vice versa) on your CRM environment be aware that you may face the following issue with your XRM Services if you have multiple bindings set in IIS:

WebHost failed to process a request.
 Sender Information: System.ServiceModel.ServiceHostingEnvironment+HostingManager/12547953
 Exception: System.ServiceModel.ServiceActivationException: The service '/Dev/XRMServices/2011/Organization.svc' cannot be activated due to an exception during compilation. The exception message is: The value could not be added to the collection, as the collection already contains an item of the same type: 'System.ServiceModel.Description.UseRequestHeadersForMetadataAddressBehavior'. This collection only supports one instance of each type.
Parameter name: item. ---> System.ArgumentException: The value could not be added to the collection, as the collection already contains an item of the same type: 'System.ServiceModel.Description.UseRequestHeadersForMetadataAddressBehavior'. This collection only supports one instance of each type.
Parameter name: item
 at System.Collections.Generic.KeyedByTypeCollection`1.InsertItem(Int32 index, TItem item)
 at Microsoft.Crm.Extensibility.SdkServiceEndpointBuilder.AddDefaultPorts(ServiceHost serviceHost, PortSchemeDictionary portSchemes)
 at Microsoft.Crm.Extensibility.SdkServiceEndpointBuilder.AddDefaultEndpoint(ServiceHost serviceHost, Type implementedContract)
 at Microsoft.Crm.Extensibility.SdkServiceEndpointBuilder.BuildEndpoints(ServiceHost serviceHost, Type implementedContract, Func`1 messageInspectorFactory)
 at Microsoft.Crm.Extensibility.SdkServiceHost.InitializeRuntime()
 at System.ServiceModel.ServiceHostBase.OnOpen(TimeSpan timeout)
 at System.ServiceModel.Channels.CommunicationObject.Open(TimeSpan timeout)
 at System.ServiceModel.ServiceHostingEnvironment.HostingManager.ActivateService(ServiceActivationInfo serviceActivationInfo, EventTraceActivity eventTraceActivity)
 at System.ServiceModel.ServiceHostingEnvironment.HostingManager.EnsureServiceAvailable(String normalizedVirtualPath, EventTraceActivity eventTraceActivity)
 --- End of inner exception stack trace ---
 at System.ServiceModel.ServiceHostingEnvironment.HostingManager.EnsureServiceAvailable(String normalizedVirtualPath, EventTraceActivity eventTraceActivity)
 at System.ServiceModel.ServiceHostingEnvironment.EnsureServiceAvailableFast(String relativeVirtualPath, EventTraceActivity eventTraceActivity)
 Process Name: w3wp
 Process ID: 8388

Why you ask?! This is due to the fact that CRM is quite finicky about only wanting one particular binding for the CRM instance. Having the multiple bindings without properly setting it up will cause some conflicts (starting with the one above). So the solution here is to ensure you only have one binding in IIS. Once you have your bindings set up properly be sure to perform an IISRESET on the web server. This should resolve the error and make the XRMServices play nice. If it does not check to make sure you do not have any hard-coded values of URLs or ports anywhere. Hope this helps.