BizTalk Server 2004: When Good Configurations go Bad

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.