last weekend I had to solve another SharePoint 2010 configuration wizard issue. This server had SharePoint 2010, Project 2010, and Office Web Apps installed but not configured. After the binary file installation, it was time to start the SharePoint 2010 configuration wizard. The wizard started but stopped execution on step 3 by throwing a configuration exception. The installation logs showed this information:
Failed to create the configuration database.
An exception of type System.FormatException was thrown. Additional exception information: Guid should contain 32 digits with 4 dashes (xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx).
System.FormatException: Guid should contain 32 digits with 4 dashes (xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx).
at System.Guid..ctor(String g)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPFarm.GetInstalledProductIds()
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPFarm.Create(SqlConnectionStringBuilder configurationDatabase, SqlConnectionStringBuilder administrationContentDatabase, IdentityType identityType, String farmUser, SecureString farmPassword, SecureString masterPassphrase)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPFarm.Create(SqlConnectionStringBuilder configurationDatabase, SqlConnectionStringBuilder administrationContentDatabase, String farmUser, SecureString farmPassword, SecureString masterPassphrase)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.ConfigurationDatabaseTask.CreateOrConnectConfigDb()
at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.ConfigurationDatabaseTask.Run()
at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.TaskThread.ExecuteTask()
This exception didn’t tell me anything. Therefore, I started some research on the web. Fortunately, I found a blog post of Karthik Selvaraj that didn’t solve my problem, but led me to the right direction. The registry keys located under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server extensions\14.0\WSS\InstalledProducts were somehow malformed. You can see my situation in the next picture.
You can see from the picture that the last registry key had a 0 value instead of a GUID. This leads to the exception during the SharePoint 2010 configuration. You cannot convert a 0 value into a valid GUID value.
At the end, I solved my issue by following these steps:
- uninstalled the Office Web Apps binaries
- removed from the registry key the malformed key with the 0 value. If you don’t have three registry keys like in my situation (only two for example), then follow the steps of Karthik’s blog post.
- started the configuration wizard
The configuration finished successfully and I was able to proceed with the configuration of the farm. At the end I reinstalled the Office Web Apps binary files and executed the configuration wizard without any problems.
Hope this helps,
Patrick