Anyone who has configured BizTalk realizes the MS Team spent their budgets and their time on the important stuff: transactions, platform, security, etc. They did NOT spend their dough on the configuration components that ship with BizTalk. On a side note, some third-party folks have started coming to the rescue (TopXML is the one I looked at most recently), but for the time being, we must work with what we have.
Removing a configuration from a BizTalk Server requires only the execution of 'configframework.exe /u' at a command prompt. However, there have been times (unfortunately, more than one), that I've had BizTalk configurations fail and entered into a twilight zone state; a state where I can neither remove a configuration or create a new configuration file. It is quite frustrating: the Event Log is devoid of anything useful and even the configuration log (saved in your temp folder unless you use the /l switch to create your own) spouts garbage like "SQL Server is unavailable".
The solution? Uninstall BizTalk entirely and start over. Annoying at best; maddening at the worst.
I got medieval on the server the other day and ran a registry trace utility to track what BizTalk configuration adds and takes away on a vanilla box. Amazing, but it came down to four keys beneath HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\BizTalk Server\3.0\Administration (default settings):
- BizTalkAdminNTGroup="BizTalk Server Administrators"
- BizTalkGroupName=BizTalk Group
- MgmtDBName=BizTalkMgmtDb
- MgmtDBServer=(servername)
Remove these four keys and you will be able to generate a configuration file.
Note: Leave “Default” and "SQLScriptPath" alone (if SQLScriptPath is removed or cleared out, BizTalk configuration will fail).
I tested this twice, no more, and it worked for me. I hope it works for you too.