Step by Step Guide to Install Sitecore XP 9.1 on Windows 10 – Part 2

In the first part of this series, you learned the step by step process for installing Sitecore on your personal system. I hope you were able to successfully install it on your first attempt. However, in real life, there is always a high probability of running into an error when trying to install an enormous and complex application like Sitecore. It happened to me and trust me it’s really frustrating and time consuming to spend hours and hours to find the solution that would fix the issue. Therefore, in this post I am going to list down all the major errors (including mine) that sitecore users usually come across and we will try to understand the root cause for them and how we can fix them to move forward.

Error: Install-SitecoreConfiguration command was found but could not be loaded

Root cause: You may find this error at the very beginning when you are trying to execut the XP0-SingleDeveloper.ps1 file. This happens when the system does not have the necessary execution policies set up beforehand.

Solution & Resources: This can be resolved by running the below command in the PowerShell running as administrator.

powershell -ExecutionPolicy ByPass Install-SitecoreConfiguration -Path .\XP0-SingleDeveloper.ps1T

More details about the above fix can be found in this post.

Error: Cannot validate argument on parameter ‘Source’

Root cause:  The main reason for this error could either be the wrong location path of the Solr files/folder or the wrong default values of Solr elements in the Sitecore XP0 Configuration files.

Solution & Resources: Make sure that:

1. You are using a compatible Solr version for your Sitecore version. You can check it in Solr compatibility table.
2. The Solr file/folder path and default values are correct in all the Sitecore configuration files
3. If you are using Solr 6.6.2, change the BaseConfig configuration Default value in xconnect-solr file from “_default” to “basic_configs”

More details about this fix can be found here.

Error: Could not find Solr instance: https://localhost…

Root cause: You can encounter this error when there is no SSL certificate installed for Solr or it is not installed correctly. Therefore when the Sitecore installation process tries to access Solr with SSL protocol, it does not receive the proper response and hence generate the error.

Solution & Resources: This can easily be resolved by installing SSL certification correctly. Below are a couple of good articles that you can refer to.

1. Sitecore 9.0 Update-1 Setting up Solr with SSL
2. Setting up Solr with SSL for Sitecore 9
3. Sitecore 9 – set up SOLR SSL step by step

Error: Error requesting <Sitecore admin URL>/PopulatedManagedSchema.aspx?indexes=all
The remote server returned an error: (500) Internal Server Error.

Root cause: This issue is because of missing ASP.NET sub-component in the system.  

Solution & Resources: This can be resolved by installing ASP .Net 3.5 and 4.7 version in the system. You can do this in the “Turn Windows feature on or off” service as displayed in the image below.

If the steps listed above do not fix the issue, there are a couple of other ways discussed in the Sitecore StackExchange page (URL provided below) that will help.
Source:
Sitecore 9 XP1 Topology – Error on UpdateSolrSchema step while calling PopulatedManagedSchema.aspx

Error: You must remove all users with password before setting the containment property to none.

Root cause: This issue pops-up when a Sitecore installation process starts but for some reason it stops in the middle. During that process, the Sitecore installation process would have already created several database and users and therefore, when a user tries to re-run the installation process again, the database/users that were already created cause the problem.

Solution & Resources: The solution is to delete all the database/users that were created during the previous failed installation attempt. You can find more details on this in the following articles:

1. Sitecore 9 installation tips
2. Error Msg 12809 You must remove all users with password before

Error: Failed to start service Sitecore Marketing Automation Engine

Root cause: This error occurs when the marketing service tries to connect to xConnect but xConnect do not start up properly. Hence, the marketing service fails, and thus the installation. This can happen for several reasons in which the most common are:

1. Untrusted certificates installed under the Trusted folder.
2. Issue related to custom user that is created in the script and the identityType set to “ApplicationPoolIdentity” on the application pool of xConnect

Solution & Resources:

1. To remove the untrusted certificates, run the following two commands in another PowerShell which runs as administrator
   Get-Childitem cert:\LocalMachine\root -Recurse | Where-Object {$_.Issuer -ne $_.Subject}
   Get-Childitem cert:\LocalMachine\root -Recurse |  Where-Object {$_.Issuer -ne $_.Subject} | Move-Item -Destination Cert:\LocalMachine\CA
   
   HTTP error 403.16 – client certificate trust issue
   Sitecore 9, xConnect, SSL and that 403 Forbidden
   
   
2. This issue can be resolved by “LoadUserProfile” field to false in each of the following files
   1. Xconnect-xp0.json
   2. Sitecore-xp0.json
   3. Identityserver.json
      

Source:
WARNING: Waiting for service sc910.xconnectMarketingAutomationService

Error: C:\Program Files\iis\Microsoft Web Deploy V3\msdeploy.exe’ is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program. Check the spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify that the path is correct and try again.

Root cause: MS Web deploy tool is one of the prerequisite tool for the Sitecore installation.

Solution & Resources: Download and install the IIS Web Deploy 3.6.

Learn Sitecore Basics

Error: Unable to connect master or target server <server name>.You must have a user with the same password in master or target server

Root cause: You may see this error either when you don’t provide a correct SQL server name or provide “localhost” or “.” to automatically pick up the local SQL server.

Solution & Resources: In the case of “localhost”, usually a system runs more than one SQL server in the background, therefore, it is important to provide the specific server name for SIF to identify the server.
Source:
You must have a user with the same password in master or target server

Need assistance with Sitecore installation, architecture, enhancement, or implementation? Feel free to reach out to our Sitecore lead Eric Ramseur eric.ramseur@anant.us or email us at solutions@anant.us.