Wednesday, March 19, 2014

SharePoint 2013 SP1 Generate New Key Issue

I am in the process of setting up TFS 2013 with SharePoint 2013 SP1 and ran into a generic error that took me a good deal of trial and error to figure out.  Luckily someone else in this world ran into the same issue and posted the solution on MSDN.

My application and SQL server are both Windows 2012 SR2.  SQL 2012 version 11.0.3128.  To get SharePoint and it's prerequisites to install properly with little intervention I had to use SharePoint 2013 SP1.  I don't think SP1 made any difference as the solution was for 2013.

One of the steps in configuring SharePoint 2013 SP1 for use with TFS is to Generate a New Key in the Secure Store Service Application.


After entering my passphrase and selecting OK the message An error occurred during the "Generate Key" process.  Please try again or contact your administrator appeared.



The event log may have an entry generated by your domain account that looks like the below message.
The next step was to start searching for solutions and came across one good page that didn't work for me but might for someone else.  I tried everything in this article with no luck.  I did come across the one that worked for me as well but executed it wrong the first time.

Basically there is a service that is not running in SharePoint called the Claims to Windows Token Service.  You are to start it and restart 3 SharePoint services.  Then reset IIS.
  1. SharePoint Administration
  2. SharePoint Timer Service
  3. SharePoint Tracing Service
  4. Start -> Run -> iisreset
My problem was I started the service the old fashioned way.  This did not work for me.


To get it working you have to go to the System Settings -> Manage Services on Server page in the SharePoint Central Administration site.  From there start it and then restart the other services.  Once done give creating the key a shot.  It worked for me!