“Sharepoint 2010 Secure Store: An error occurred during the “Generate Key” process. Please try again or contact your administrator”

Things to check:

– Ensure the logged in user is a member of the farm administrators group

– In my case the ‘Sharepoint Webservices Root’ application pool had stopped on one of my app servers

I had a strange problem where if I went into:

Central Admin –> Manage Databases Upgrade Status

in Sharepoint 2010 I had 2 Business Data Connectivity Service databases with the same name! The status of the one in use was ‘No action required’ & the rogue one had ‘Database is too old and upgrade is required’

There was only one database showing on the SQL server, the one in use, if you find you get 2 service application databases with the same name (somehow!?) the command to delete it is:

Stsadm -o deleteconfigurationobject -id b9b3e713-9e53-42ab-a634-a2c54e90a0d6

(replace the guid with the rogue database guid)

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If you have changed your URL for your Sharepoint 2010 farm you will get the error:

‘No valid proxy can be found to do this operation’

when trying to publish new content types from the content type hub.

This is because the URL in the managed meta data service application needs to be updated to reflect the new URL change. You can do this by running the following Powershell script:

Set-SPMetadataServiceApplication -Identity "Managed Metadata Application" -HubURI "http://NewSharepointURL"

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After creating a new secure store service application everytime I clicked manage it would say I dont have correct permissions no matter who I was logged in as. In the event logs I was getting the following errors:

Event ID 8306: An exception occurred when trying to issue security token: The server was unable to process the request due to an internal error.

Event ID 7557: The Secure Store Service application Secure Store Service Application is not accessible. The server was unable to process the request due to an internal error

The solution was that the ‘Claims to Windows Token Service’ wasn’t started on the Sharepoint server(s). Once I started this & restarted the Sharepoint services I was able to manage my secure store service application.

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When deleting & recreating Sharepoint service applications you sometimes get old application pools showing in your drop downs. To delete these orphaned application pools:

Remove-SPServiceApplicationPool -Identity "Orphaned SharePoint Service Application Pool Name"

To list you application pools:

Get-SPServiceApplicationPool | select Id, Name

When trying to delete a service application in Sharepoint 2010 from the central admin, sometimes you will find it just stays on the ‘processing’ window for hours (if you wait that long).

If it does you can try & delete the service application using Powershell:

Remove-SPServiceApplication

If that command doesnt work you can force the deletion by using STSADM:

STSADM -o deleteconfigurationobject -id {ID}

The above STSADM command is not documented by Microsoft (or doesnt seem to be)

Had a strange problem when creating a new Secure Store Service Application, the wizard would complete but when you click ‘manage’ you would get an error saying –

‘Cannot complete this action as the Secure Store Shared Service is not responding. Please contact your administrator’

After looking at the event logs it was failing with an error:

Cannot open database “Secure_Store_Service_DB_edb5686a-ff41-4457-903a-4ff09xxxxxx” requested by the login. The login failed. Login failed for user ‘XXXXXXX\FarmAcct’.

After lots of head scratching I notice that the db the Secure Store Service App wizard was creating in Central Admin was a different database to the one giving the connection error in my event viewer.

I tried to create a new service app & renamed the DB to the name that it was trying to connect to but I would then get an error message saying this database already existed, even though it didnt exist in SQL Management Studio.

It was trying to connect to an orphaned secure store service DB which must have been created at an earlier time, which I verified by looking here:

http://CentralAdminURL/_admin/DatabaseStatus.aspx

To cut a long story short you can use this powershell script to remove any orphaned Sharepoint 2010 Service Application databases

$snapin = Get-PSSnapin | Where-Object {$_.Name -eq
'Microsoft.SharePoint.Powershell'}
if ($snapin -eq $null) {
 Write-Host "Loading SharePoint Powershell Snapin"
 Add-PSSnapin "Microsoft.SharePoint.Powershell"
}
Get-SPDatabase | Where{$_.Exists -eq $false} | ForEach {$_.Delete()}

I found the script at http://www.sharepointusecases.com/index.php/2010/12/how-to-remove-renamed-sharepoint-2010-service-app-databases/

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The architecture for SharePoint has changed considerably. Watch this session to see what the changes are and how to design your SharePoint environment to take advantage of the new services provided by SharePoint 2010.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/edge/understanding-the-service-applications-of-sharepoint-2010.aspx