Getting unexpected shutdowns on the AX7 virtual machine

Working with the standard virtual machines released by Microsoft you might experience like I have shutdowns of the machine (unexpected shutdowns I might say). Looking in the event viewer you will however notice this: "The license period for this installation of Windows has expired.  The operating system will shutdown every hour.".

Getting Could not retrieve a valid Windows identity message

If you are getting this message when installing Enterprise Portal in 2012 "Server was unable to process request. ---> Could not retrieve a valid Windows identity. ---> The message could not be dispatched because the service at the endpoint address 'net.pipe://localhost/s4u/022694f3-9fbd-422b-b4b2-312e25dae2a2' is unavailable for the protocol of the address." it's because of a stopped service in SharePoint.

Getting Could not write Visual Studio Project access is denied message

If you are getting: "Object Server 01:  Couldn't write Visual Studio Project assembly file C:\Program Files\Microsoft Dynamics AX\60\Server\MicrosoftDynamicsAX\Bin\VSAssemblies\Microsoft.Dynamics.Commerce.Headquarters.PricingProxy.dll. Error code 5: Access is denied.".

Getting A call to SSPI failed the target principal name is incorrect message

If you are getting this error message  in the middle of the AX installation: "Unable to get version information using existing WCF configuration from local storage. Exception details:
Microsoft.Dynamics.AX.Framework.Services.Client.MetadataServiceException: Exception occurred on the metadata service on client or server. See exception details below:
>A call to SSPI failed, see inner exception. ---> ..... The target principal name is incorrect."

Enable Windows 2012 R2 RD Session Host without a Broker

Not related to AX development, but for sure needed in AX development infrastructure (I've been working exclusively on VMs when doing AX development for the last decade or so ...). The topic: enabling remote desktop services to allow more then two users to be logged on the server (I'm not talking about the remote desktop option that allows a max of two users, but of the Windows Server Role).

Getting The server is not accepting new connections at this time message

Simple quiz today: what do you do when you get the message "The server is not accepting new connections at this time".

Role Centers not showing in Home

Recently I had to do a run through the possible reason why the Role Centers are not working properly in the Home module.

Check that your AOS services are working

There are times when the services running under AOS are having different issues (wrong configurations, changed settings, etc).

Create Role as SysAdmin without the DEV

For some time now, I am trying to lock down the possibility of users (mainly the people running tests) doing accidental changes on objects in TEST instances, where this shouldn't happen.

Change the SID / domain for a user

Basically you want to do this if you've just got a new set of databases from another site and you are locked out of AX. Just open SSMS, and run the following T-SQL.

Save infolog messages using listeners

I had to recall couple days ago how to save the infolog content to the Windows Event Log or to a file on disk. This can be done now in 2012 very easy with the help of listeners. If you want to read more on this, you can find the details at https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.diagnostics.tracelistener%28v=vs.110%29.aspx.

Install Modern appx applications without Windows Store

So, if you are going to install Modern POS on your machine you will need to do an extra step before actually getting to the install part.

About License Configuration details and settings

I was looking these days on duplicating an environment and one task was to actually get the License Configuration the same in the second environment. Of course, I wasn't doing this by backing up and restoring the database, this was a fresh install.

Setting Ax Setup.exe file association

When starting the Ax Setup.exe installer, on some system an association it is not set, the application required being Microsoft HTML Application host for a .hta file.

ModelStore has changed window keeps appearing

After working with a model (installing or deleting it), issuing the Set-AxModel -NoInstallMode has no effect, meaning that you still get the ModelStore has changed window, and even selecting Skip in the UI, this happens again when you reopen the AX client.

Management Reporter on R3 no CU install error fix

I was setting up Management Reporter in the following scenario: AX 2012 R3 (no CU), SQL 2014, Management Reporter (ran from the R3 disk, then applied the CU11 update, before starting the configuration); and ran into the following error: "An error occurred while configuring SQL change tracking. Check your deployment log for details.".

Useful advice when doing installations

I think I am getting it now why applications (AX of course in particular) are coming today with a Check for updates as a prerequisite when installing them. It's because we are starting to get so many versions of the additional software we need to run it on, that the number of combinations gets us sometime in unsupported paths.

Connect to specific AOS when in cluster

Over the last years, the need to connect to a specific AOS when working in a clustered topology arose multiple times, and if you do not want to shutdown all the other AOSs in order to get only to one, you can use this (as I also discovered by doing some searches):