SQL SERVER – Unable to Install Reporting Service Add-In for SharePoint – System.ArgumentException

There are so many components in SQL Server and sometimes there is an error in installing components which I have not used at all. One such component is SSRS with SharePoint. To use this, we need to install Reporting Service Add-In for SharePoint. In this blog, we would see how to fix error System.ArgumentException which was encountered during the installation of Reporting Service Add-In for SharePoint.

No matter which way I tried to install the RS Add-in I kept seeing the same errors in Detail.txt

(01) 2018-06-18 03:08:31 RS: Installing web service managed performance counters.
(01) 2018-06-18 03:08:32 RS: Installing Windows service managed performance counters.
(01) 2018-06-18 03:08:34 RS: Continue after failure in installing or reinstalling managed performance counters. – System.ArgumentException: Cannot create Performance Category with counter name Report Requests/sec because the name is a duplicate.
At system.Diagnostics.PerformanceCounterCategory.CheckValidCounterLayout(CounterCreationDataCollection counterData)
at System.Diagnostics.PerformanceCounterCategory.Create(String categoryName, String categoryHelp, PerformanceCounterCategoryType categoryType, CounterCreationDataCollection counterData)
at Microsoft.ReportingServices.Common.RSPerfCounterInstallUtil.InstallProgressiveReportPerfCounters()
at Microsoft.ReportingServices.Common.RSPerfCounterUtil.SetManagedPerfCounters(Boolean isSharePointMode)

Then I shifted my focus to the RsSharePoint log in the setup log files. I saw these errors, or you might call it “Interesting Info”.

CA MSG: Running RSCustomAction
CA MSG : Launching C:\Users\sa_admin\AppData\Local\Temp\rsCustomAction.exe with command line parameter /i
CA MSG: rsCustomAction.exe failed to configure, an Error code is: 1
CustomAction RSSP_CAInstall_64 returned actual error code 1603 (note this may not be 100% accurate if translation happened inside sandbox)

When trying to understand what rsCustomAction.exe is, I got this article.

Basically, we have a manual way to install and configure RsSharepoint Addin.

Files-only installation

To install the files but skip the custom action phase of installation, run the rssharepoint.msi from the command line with the SKIPCA option. Open a command prompt with administrator permissions. Run the following command:

Msiexec.exe /i rsSharePoint.msi SKIPCA=1 

The installation user interface will open and run as normal and the rsCustomAction.exe file is installed. However, the .exe will not run at the end of the installation and rsCustomAction.exe will remain on the computer when the installation is completed.

Run the custom actions executable

Below are the steps.

1. Open a command prompt with administrator permissions
2. Navigate to the folder that contains the file exe

CD %temp%.

The file should be in \AppData\Local\Temp

3. Type the following command. This configuration step will take several minutes to finish. The W3SVC service will be restarted during this process. Several Status messages will be displayed as the program copies files, registers components, and runs the SharePoint Product Configuration Wizard.

rsCustomAction.exe /i

Setup Log Files

When Setup runs, it logs information to a log file in the %temp% folder for the user who installed the Reporting Services Add-in.

For example c:\Users\\AppData\Local\Temp

The file name is RS_SP_<number>.log, for example RS_SP_0.log.

Each error in the log starts with the string “SSRSCustomActionError“.

In my case when running — rsCustomAction.exe /i   we got the below errors.

The applicationcontent command is invalid or a failure has been encountered.
The server farm will not work with missing installs. Add “-cmd installcheck -noinstallcheck” to the command-line to ignore this warning.
The following is missing on <ComputerName>:
Security Update for Microsoft SharePoint Enterprise Server 2013 (KB2737989) 64-Bit Edition
Security Update for Microsoft SharePoint Enterprise Server 2013 (KB2880473) 64-Bit Edition
Security Update for Microsoft SharePoint Enterprise Server 2013 (KB2880473) 64-Bit Edition

Above is really an interesting information which looks like the cause of the failure.

WORKAROUND/SOLUTION

And, indeed it was. After installing all the missing updates, we again ran the below command. This time Reporting Service Add-In for SharePoint got installed successfully.

rsCustomAction.exe /i  

Hope, this would help someone in finding the right cause of the error.

Reference: Pinal Dave (https://blog.sqlauthority.com)

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