Title
BTS error “The provider did not return a ProviderManifestToken string”
Symptoms
When accessing BTS (Bentley Transmittal Server) functionality via the “ProjectWise Explorer V8i (SELECTseries 4)” client application with the “Bentley Transmittal connector for ProjectWise” client addon installed (both applications packaged in package “129560-Bentley-PrjwiseReports-8.11.11574-EN-1.0”), the following error is displayed:
“The provider did not return a ProviderManifestToken string”
When checking the log file on the BTS server (“CSMSDC-VTMTP02:C:\Users\All Users\Bentley\Logs\LoggingService.log”) the following exception is listed:
“The following exception was thrown: The provider did not return a ProviderManifestToken string. Inner Exception: Login failed for user 'NT AUTHORITY\ANONYMOUS LOGON'.”
Cause
In order for BTS functionality to be available, the BTS server application (IIS Website “BTSserver” on CSMSDC-VTMTP02) requires access to the BTS database (database “BTS” on SQL Server instance “CSMPER-SQL36\SQL2008Prod1”). The access is enabled by the domain computer account “APAC\CSMSDC-VTMTP02$” having SQL “db_owner” permissions on the “BTS” database within the SQL Server instance.
However, due to a known issue in Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2, certain circumstances modify the behaviour of IIS such that it begins incorrectly using the identity “NT AUTHORITY\ANONYMOUS LOGON” to authenticate with SQL Server. Since this identity does not have access to the “BTS” database, the BTS server is not able to access the database and BTS functionality fails. As per the reference 1 and reference 2 below, this issue can be temporarily resolved by restarting the IIS server (BTS server CSMSDC-VTMTP02). Installing the Microsoft hotfix as per reference 2 and reference 3 below may permanently solve the issue.
References
Resolution
The issue is temporarily resolved by restarting the BTS server (CSMSDC-VTMTP02).