Getting Syspro e.net Business Objects to work remotely from a non-Administrator account can be tricky if you’re not familiar with DCOM.  Syspro has some general instructions in their Support Zone, but they are missing a couple of steps for Windows Server 2003.  Below are the steps I used to configure DCOM for Syspro e.net Business Objects in Windows Server 2003.

  • Create a domain group called SysproDCOM.
    • Put everyone who will use e.net Business Objects in this group.
    • Give this group full access to the Base, Programs, and Work folders in the Syspro installation folder on the server.
  • Run dcomcnfg on the server.
    • Edit DCOM Limits:
      • Expand Component Services, Computers.
      • Right-click on My Computer, click Properties.
      • Click on the Com Security tab.
      • Under Launch and Activation Permissions, click Edit Limits.
      • Add the SysproDCOM group here, and set all permissions to Allow.
      • Click OK on both windows.
    • Set permissions for individual Syspro DCOMs:
      • Expand My Computer, DCOM Config.
      • Perform the following for each item beginning with “Syspro e.net solutions“:
        • Right-click, click Properties.
        • Click on the Security tab.
        • Under Launch and Activation Permissions, select Customize, then click Edit.
        • Add the SysproDCOM group and set all permissions to Allow.
        • Click OK on both windows.
  • Re-register Encore.dll:
    • Run e.net Diagnostics on the server.
    • Click Tools, Register e.net solutions, Register DLL.
    • Click OK.

Be very careful messing around with DCOM permissions.  Before I figured out the exact steps necessary to make this work I somehow managed to screw up DCOM so bad that core Windows components were unable to communicate with each other.  This basically hosed my entire Windows installation.  I couldn’t open event log entries or check the properties of services, and many core services wouldn’t start.  I could ping out but not in, my Network Connections Control Panel was completely blank, and eventually the taskbar stopped working altogether, even in Safe Mode.  I had to restore from backup.  Don’t make that mistake.  :)

There’s another issue I ran into while messing with this that is worth noting.  At one point when I was trying to get the permissions configured, every time I would re-register the DLL, the DCOM permissions I set would get lost somehow.  I would get error 800a01ad (access denied) when trying to log in to e.net Business Objects remotely, even logged in as an Administrator.  The permissions looked fine, they just didn’t work.  Any time I made any changes to the permissions, I would then get error 80040154 (class not registered) when trying to log in through e.net Business Objects.  I was stuck in an infinite loop.  :/  Finally after everyone left for the day I rebooted the server and after that everything worked the way it was supposed to.  If you run into this issue, try rebooting the server before screwing around with it for half the day.  ;)