Installing 'WCF HTTP Activation' on Windows Vista fails?

Answer 1

I had a problem like this where the machine.config file was corrupted; some component in .NET modified it and inserted a null byte somewhere. If you have powershell installed, you can quickly check the validity of the config like so:

[xml](gc $env:windir\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\config\machine.config)

It will fail to parse if corrupted.

-Oisin

Answer 2

Oook here's the deal: when you install the .Net 4.0 beta, for some reason it also overwrites at least one of your .Net 3.0 (WCF) files, at least on 64bit systems, namely

"c:\windows\microsoft.net\framework64\v3.0\Windows Communication Foundation\SMConfigInstaller.EXE".

So the bad part is, with this new version in place you cannot longer enable the "WCF HTTP Activation" Feature of Vista and Win7 and even worse, uninstalling .Net 4 beta does not restore the original version.

Meh.

So the only manual workaround is to get your hands on an actual pre .net 4 beta version of the folder above and restore the file(s) manually.

-J

Answer 3

CAUTION!!! I would caution against ever messing with framework files manually like the above poster suggested...that's just asking for trouble.

I had a similar issue which I have now solved without touching with any framework files.

Background: I was trying to get my IIS hosted WCF service running with a net.tcp endpoint on Windows 7. I had installed IIS after installing VS2010 beta2. Although my service was working over HTTP, when my client tried to connect over net.tcp it would get the completely ridiculous error: "FatalExecutionEngineError was detected" No help at all!!!

I think the error was being thrown because my WCF client was unable to connect to the server. Normally a connection-related exception should be thrown, but I suspect that I got the fatal error because my service request consisted of a custom Message with a Stream.

Anyways, I finally got it working and I believe the key was to re-install the WCF HTTP activation along with aspnet.

1. Go to the Control Panel
2. Click on Programs and Features
3. Click on Turn Windows Features on/off
4. Uncheck Microsoft.Net Framework 3.5.1 (and the two options beneath)
5. Click OK to restart
6. Follow steps 1-3 then check all 3 options and restart

I then registered IIS by running the following (as admin): %windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.21006\aspnet_regiis.exe -iru

Sorry for the long story, but I wanted all the "key words" in there for google to help other folks that might run into the same or similar problem.