Today I’ve been playing with BizTalk 2006 remote scenarios and of course ran into MSDTC configuration issues.

I have BizTalk administration utilities installed on my PC, and BizTalk with the SQL Server was running on the Virtual Server.

When I was trying to expand applications container (on the client machine) I was getting message like:

“Error during policies enumeration. Check if your MSDTC settings for remote network clients are set up properly.”.

So, I started to check everything step-by-step:

a) Ensure that MSDTC network access is allowed on all machines (client, BizTalk, SQL if any).

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/BTS_2004WP/html/ace6e1b9-ca24-4d14-9203-099276b50a73.asp

Check the chapter: “To configure the BizTalk Server 2004 computer”

b) Turn off RPC security

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=839187

After going through all of this, administration console was still throwing these messages at me.

I took the DTCTester utility: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;293799

I ran the test, but it was teeling that either firewall is not open (I didn’t had any) … the usual stuff.

After a while I have tryed change the MSDTC configuration and instead of using local MSDTC, I have changed to the BizTalk Server. After this, DTCTester lost any connection to the MSDTC.

After a little research I found the problem. It was the TCP/IP or to be more exact WINS configuration.

c) Enable NetBIOS on your network adapter (usually I keep it disabled). Take the following steps:

  • Open Properties for the network adapter
  • TCP/IP Properties
  • Advanced and select WINS Tab
  • Ensure that the “Enable NetBIOS over TCP/IP” is selected

After enabling this setting MSDTC problems dissapeared.

Though, other problems started showing up.