Project 2010 Demo and Evaluation Pack–An Unexpected Error has occurred
By blurg64
A couple of users on the Project forums have run into issues getting the Project Server Demo Pack to install onto the 2010 Information Worker Demonstration and Evaluation Virtual Machine. On the surface the demo pack appears to install without issue.
But when you try to navigate to http://project.contoso.com/PWA you get the dreaded ‘An unexpected error has occurred’.
On navigating the Central Administration > Application Management > Manage Service Applications > Project Server Service Application and checking the provisioned Project sites, it appears that no Project Server Web App sites have been provisioned, even though the demo installer reported it was successful.
It seems that the installer runs into an issue when the underlying demo VM has either expired or was not activated prior to installing the Project Demo and Eval pack. Luckily, fixing the problem couldn’t be simpler.
Firstly, follow the instructions to activate the IW Demo and Evaluation VM, this will require you to add a second internet connected NIC to the VM to allow the activation to occur. Once the VM has been activated, you should see the following.
As the demo installer has done most of the hard work, including restoring the various databases, creating the web application and configuring things like the Secure Store and Excel Services, all that is remaining is to (re)provision the Project Web App site using the restored databases. To do so, navigate to Central Administration > Application Management > Manage Service Applications > Project Server Service Application and choose to ‘Create a Project Web App Site’.
In the web page, choose the ‘project’ web application to host the Project Web App as per below.
Then enter the names of the databases that were previously restored as per below and click on ok.
After a short while the Project Web App site will provision and http://project.contoso.com/PWA will be accessible without the dreaded ‘An unexpected error has occurred’.