Resolved error “The following system error occurred: No mapping between account names and security IDs was done.”

After getting our new TFS 2012 server built out I found myself unable to grant permissions to the Tfs_Analysis database in SQL Analysis services. When attempting to add a new user of the local Active Directory domain to the TfsWarehouseDataReader role I received the above error.

I found that the role membership contained a user that was unresolvable via Active Directory and showed up as a SID only (no domain\name). Removing that unresolved user allowed me to add new groups to the role from the local AD.

It would appear from this that the logic is revalidating all of the users and groups that are listed in the membership role list when adding/removing members.

WCF Test Client Error

When starting to debug a new WCF service I received the following error message:

“The contract ‘IMetatdataExchange’ in client configuration does not match the name in service contract, or there is no valid method in this contract.”

I had added my MEX endpoint in the web.config and was able to review the service WSDL through a browser, so I was really not sure why I was getting this. As it turns out, this error message is caused by an entry in the machine.config for an endpoint declaration defined like this:

<endpoint address="" binding="netTcpRelayBinding" contract="IMetadataExchange" name="sb" />

I’ve commented it out for now and the WCF Test Client is now able to properly interrogate the service metadata without giving me an error.

After a bit of Google’ing this error, I found this explanation from Joel C on StackOverflow.com. Looks like at some point an installation for the .NET Service SDK (which I don’t remember installing) updated the machine.config with that information.

For now, it works having removed it.

Visual Studio 2010 Error–The Project File Could Not Be Loaded. Root Element is Missing.

I happened upon this gem of an error today. It is totally a red herring. I was expecting to find some kind of corruption in the XML like a missing <Project> tag or something similar; however, when I compared the .csproj file between revisions in Subversion, I found no substantial differences, only some additional files added to the project. So what gives?

Turns out that this error is caused by a problem with the .user file associated with the project. Delete the .user file and voila! it works. I can’t take credit for figuring it out. Thanks goes to the BizTalk Tips and Tricks blog here.