Avatar

I've had the Avatar game on pre-order for a wee while and was very happy to receive it last week on release day. I was expecting a box to arrive with a pair of swanky red and green glasses after all the 3D hype, but I guess the Wii version isn't 3D as no swanky glasses for me. I am a tad disappointed in that side of things. Anyhoo... on to the game itself.

I started playing Avatar last week and am really impressed with the beautiful World that has been created. The game is smooth to play and I'm enjoying that on the Wii you use the nunchuck and wiimote to leap around the lounge hitting invaders with a spear. I'm very much looking forward to the parts that involve the balance board as well.

I've always been a fan of these type of games, where you're running around collecting weapons and killing foes on the way, but the added dimension of having to actually wave your arms around instead of just pressing buttons really is fun. Now, if they could create a version of Baldur's Gate for the Wii I'd be most happy indeedy.

Dynamics CRM - reinstalling a broken install

A week was spent doing battle with virtual machines, setting up servers, sorting out IIS, SQL Server, AD etc etc... and when everything was in place, Dynamics CRM was installed. More time was then spent making sure that the install would make it past the verification page and at long last we had a beautifully set up instance of Dynamics CRM running on a virtual server, attached to our domain and residing on my PC. Life was good. Then someone unintentionally broke it before I'd had a chance to take a copy of the virtual machine, except that because of what was broken it wouldn't have mattered if we'd had a copy as the AD links and machine name were toasted on the domain. Pants! So next came the mission to fix things.

Several options were tried and after much hair pulling eventually the domain was recognizing the server again. Once the server was back in play there was an attempt to connect to the Dynamics CRM site but lady luck was not with us that day and we received the error: “Business Management Error. The user id associated with the current record is not valid”. This was happening when we accessed using localhost:5555 and servername:5555. Bugger! Says I.

My Google mojo was in poor shape at the end of last week and only two websites offered any inkling of help. When all two options had been tried and there was still no joy, the next step was to contact a very nice man at Microsoft who spent quite a bit of time helping me with this issue. Alas still no joy.

So on to the next option. Uninstall and reinstall Dynamics CRM. Probably not an option you can do in a production situation but then again, in a production situation if someone decides to take a copy of your server and rename it whilst being attached to the domain you've probably got bigger problems to worry about.

Uninstalling is nice and easy but before you reinstall you need to drop the SQL databases that were created as part of the initial Dynamics CRM install. Renaming them won't work as Dynamics CRM still manages to maintain links to them and will fail with lots of groovy messages about missing log files. If you drop the tables then all goes swimmingly with the install. If you've got data you want to keep, take a backup or a copy of the databases first and then do a merge after you've got things up and running again.

Once you've dropped your tables, reinstall using most of the same options as you did previously but this time with one difference, don't use the default website, select the option to create a new website.

And that should be it. You'll be up and running again. Phew....

Probe to crash into the moon

This could be interesting to watch:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33196816/ns/technology_and_science-space/

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Installation Checklist

I've created an installation check list for Microsoft Dynamics CRM based upon my experiences during installation and also including some of the notes from the planning guide provided by Microsoft.

It's attached as a word document and you can download it from the right hand side of this page.

Free Money

RaboPlus are giving away moolah. www.RaboPlus.co.nz - all you need to do is play their fortune teller game and you will win a minimum of $50, but could win $500 if you're the lucky type. To claim the prize you need to open a new savings account with them, minimum deposit to do that is $1. I'm pretty sure all of us can spare $1 in order to get a minimum of $50 in return. :) Closing date to get the new account documentation in to them is 5pm on Friday 16th October. So get a move on if you want some free money. :)

Dynamics CRM - minor bugette workarounds

1. When checking for updates you get an error. No problem, hit the back button and try again and it should work the second time.

2. It wants to install visual C++ runtime every time, this is a known issue - doesn't take too long to reinstall it each time thankfully.

3. Install thinks SQL Full Text Search is not installed - make sure you have the latest update of Dynamics CRM before installing, it's a known bug that has been fixed in a patch (of course, you should also make sure that you've started the service).

Yippie ki-yay

I have finally made it past the verification screen. Dynamics CRM is now installing on the virtual server. On the plus side - all this mucking around has given me a good idea of what to double and triple check before even trying to start the install. :)

1. Make sure you have a Dynamics CRM AD group setup with permissions. The network support guys really don't like letting you have access to their servers so this is a good alternative solution. Get them to set up a group and give you permissions to that.

2. Install SQL Server 2008 with everything installed.

3. Make sure IIS is installed and running

4. Make sure Windows Server is totally up to date with its patches

5. Head on in to control panel, administrative tools, services - make sure Remote Procedure Call (RPC) and Remote Procedure Call (RPC) Locator are both started.

6. Open SQL Server Configuration Manager - make sure all the services are started and using an account with access rights. I used NT Authority\NetworkService as this can be selected as an option during the CRM install. Anything but LocalService - you do not want to use that.

7. Open Reporting Services Configuration Manager - connect to the report server instance, click on Service Account and make sure that is using an account with access. Again, I set this to use Network Service. As with the previous config, don't use Local Service.

8. Whilst in Reporting services config, click on Encryption Keys and select Change (I didn't have any keys in place so if you're using an existing database you probably don't want to do this, however, if you do have an existing database, you might want to get a backup of the key at this point).

9. Whilst in Reporting services config, click on Web Service URL - click on the URL link and copy it to notepad - you'll need it later.

10. Next, you need to know your email router information - tech support can generally help with that if you don't know what it is.

11. Jump back to the services screen and check that everything is running, SQL Full-text Filter Daemon Launcher may be stopped, make sure this is started and using Network Services.

12. Get your license key ready... start the install....