Friday, March 30, 2012

Error when using New-SPConfigurationDatabase command

I was recently setting up a fresh SharePoint 2010 SP1 (with all the latest CUs) development environment and since I had no use for a domain controller, I simply used the New-SPConfigurationDatabase PowerShell command (http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ekraus/archive/2009/11/06/sharepoint-2010-provisioning-a-new-farm-with-powershell.aspx) in the SharePoint 2010 Management Shell to create my SharePoint 2010 Configuration Databases.

Unfortunately, when entering the local account credentials, I only entered the local user name and password rather than fully qualifying the user name and password in the format [COMPUTER NAME]\[UserName].  So, of course, I got the following error message: "The user does not exist or is not unique"

Well, I simply tried to then fully qualify the user name and password again using the fully qualified credentials--NO LUCK!!  Even though the error message occurred, the databases were created in SQL Server, but with INCORRECT/INVALID credentials.  Of course, as you can guess, this renders the databases completely UNUSABLE.

Ok, so I thought I would try again by deleting the existing SQL Server databases and re-running the command with the proper credentials.  Unfortunately, SharePoint STILL THINKS those databases exist even though I have deleted them off the SQL Server.  Even after closing down the SharePoint 2010 Management Shell and opening it a subsequent time, I could not rid myself of the error.  I even re-started my SQL Server to see if that had any effect and it also had no effect whatsoever.

The solution???

I simply re-booted my entire server and then re-ran the New-SPConfigurationDatabase command with the local account credentials in the format [COMPUTER NAME]\[UserName].  That seemed to do the trick!!  Apparently the SharePoint Services on the machine cache the database credentials and configuration information, thereby requiring a re-start of the various SharePoint Services, or more simply, re-booting the server.


1 comment:

  1. Cheers mate! I would have guessed the computer name would have been implicit in the username. Not so, apparently. :)

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