SCCM 2007 Site Server Installation: Failed to install component SMS_MP_CONTROL_MANAGER on server…

Recently I set out to rebuild our SCCM 2007 lab environment as the entire lab infrastructure had just been replaced and Server 2008 R2 was now available. After our server team handed off the new site server I installed all of the required components without issue. However during my SCCM installation phase the MP Control Manager came with a status unknown warning but the SCCM installation log didn’t lead me to believe that anything went wrong. After the installation I opened the SCCM console to check the status of all my site components and not surprisingly my SMS_MP_CONTROL_MANAGER status was full of errors.

SMS Site Component Manager failed to install component SMS_MP_CONTROL_MANAGER on server “server name”

The WebDAV server extension is either not installed or not configured properly.

Solution: Make sure WebDAV is installed and enabled. Make sure there is an authoring rule that allow "All users" read access to "All content". Make sure the WebDAV settings "Allow anonymous property queries" and "Allow property queries with infinite depth" are set to "true" and "Allow Custom Properties" is set to false.

This error seemed odd as WebDAV was installed without any problems and both the authoring rules and configuration settings had been doubled checked.
• WebDAV enabled – check
• Authoring rule configured the required way error message solution suggested – check
• WebDAV settings configured the required way error message solution suggested – check
• Double checked with the following TechNet article http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc431377.aspx - check
• IIS logs clean – check
• Server rebooted - check

I decided to reinstall WebDAV just in case something had gone sideways during the original install. After removing WebDAV, rebooting the server (required), reinstalling WebDAV and reconfiguring it SMS_MP_CONTROL_MANAGER reinstalled before I could even get the SCCM console open again.

SMS Site Component Manager successfully installed this component on this site system.

I couldn’t find a solid reason for why the component installation failed originally but sometimes the solution to your problem is not necessarily the most complex.

Windows Server 2008 R2 – Disable Enhanced Security Configuration

If you’ve ever tried to use Internet Explorer with Enhanced Security Configuration enabled you know what a pain it is. You spend more time clicking on security pop-ups than you do browsing the internet. In a production environment it’s not a big deal because I spend zero time browsing the internet from the console of a server – besides it’s a security best practice not too. However this week I spent some time in our lab trying to figure out a couple of things and needed internet access from my server. In Windows 2003 you simply went into Add / Remove programs and removed Internet Explorer Enhanced Configuration as a component. This is no longer the case in Server 2008 R2. To disable IE ESC on a Windows 2008 R2 machine follow these steps:
• Launch Server Manager
• On the main page click on Configure IE ESC (Bottom right-hand corner)
• Turn this functionality off for the required user group