SCCM 2012 Application Catalog Website: “Make sure WCF is activated” and .NET Unhandled Exceptions

In my brand new environment I am happily installing the marvelous SCCM features when from nowhere I have difficulty adding the application catalog website role to my single server standalone primary site. What in the world. I see two repeating errors:

Site Component Manager failed to install component

The WCF is not activated

Solution: Make sure the WCF is activated.

I start looking around and realize that I’ve forgotten to include the WCF service as a part of the .NET framework installation.

I install the feature and both subfeatures, then open the CM service manager and restart the SMS_SITE_COMPONENT_MANAGER service so that the installation will immediately restart, or I could have waited 60 minutes and viola!

Success!

Or so I thought….after it was successfully installed I was getting unhandled exception .NET errors when attempting to browse to the CMApplicationCatalog website.

Could not load type ‘System.ServiceModel.Activation.HttpModule’ from assembly ‘System.ServiceModel, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089’.

DOH! I forgot to register the .NET Framework 4.0 components like a big fool. Props to Russ Rimmerman for posting up.

I ran this command: %windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\aspnet_regiis.exe –i –enable, which didn’t work for me, it just kept spitting out the help message, which one other person complained of in the above Russ Rimmerman post, even when drilling into the directory with the command prompt. After fiddling around with that for a while I started getting this error: aspnet_regiis.exe is not a valid Win32 application.

So I performed a repair of the .NET framework 4.0 from the Programs and Applications in control panel, then performed the following command line, which worked:

Annnnnd it worked! Except, then I was getting an authentication problem where no matter what credentials I used I couldn’t log in. Peachy.

So then  I found this article:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/michaelgriswold/archive/2012/06/08/application-catalog-not-working-for-everyone.aspx

Where they suggested to once again, remove the roles from the server, perform aspnet_regiis.exe /iru, then reinstall the roles.

and FINALLY 8 years later we have a working Application Catalog. And now I need a nap.

Moral of the story:

1. Ensure that .NET WCF is installed as a prereq
2. Ensure that .NET 4.0 is registered with IIS (You can do this by installing .NET 4.0 before the IIS roles, or via the command line afterwards)
3. Ensure that your installation of .NET 4.0 is good.