Reporting Services on Windows Vista Redux

2007-01-20 james 18 comments

You know you’re living life on the bleeding edge when you search the web for an answer to your problem and your own blog appears as one of the most promising results!?! (Currently third from the top on this search.) Reporting Services on Windows Vista just doesn’t work out-of-the-box, even with SQL Server 2005 SP2 installed. (N.B. SP2 is beta/CTP right now.) So I decided to do a bit of digging. As is noted here, local administrators are no longer SQL Server admins by default. (Local administrators used to get this because they were a member of Administrators group and Administrators was added to the SQL Server sysadmin role by default. Because of UAC – which is an excellent security technology no matter what its detractors might say – local administrators do not have the Administrators SID in their security token. (In order to have the administrators token, you must elevate using “right-click, Run as administrator” and consent via the UAC prompt.) So how do you grant your user (administrator or not – and I still encourage not) access to the report server?

Run IE as an administrator. (Right-click IE, Run as administrator.)
Browse to your Report Manager directory, usually http://localhost/reports.
Click on Site Settings (upper right).
Under the Security heading, click “Configure site-wide security”.
“New Role Assignment” and add your user to the System Administrators role.
Click “Home”, “Properties”, and under security “New Role Assignment”, add your user to “Content Manager”.

Now the funny part… Try running a non-elevated IE and browse to http://localhost/Reports. This is the result:

Report Manager - IE Protected Mode

Now let’s try it with FireFox:

Report Manager - Firefox

That looks a lot better. Turns out that IE Protected Mode is getting in the way and preventing Report Manager from rendering properly. (IE7 runs in Protected Mode by default, which is a good thing.) We can disable protected mode just for this site by adding it to our trusted sites list in IE. (Tools… Internet Options… Security tab… Select “Trusted sites”… Click “Sites”… and add http://localhost to the list.) Also make sure that “Enable Protected Mode” is disabled for Trusted Sites. (It should be enabled for Internet/Local intranet/Restricted sites.)

Report Manager - IE Trusted Sites

Note on the bottom bar “Trusted sites | Protected Mode: Off”. That looks a lot better under IE7! I haven’t investigated why Report Manager doesn’t like Protected Mode, but it should get many of you up and running with Reporting Services on Vista.

Reporting Services none

#1 | Written by Gerald about 18 years ago. Reply

You talk about viewing reporting services through IE7. What about creating reports, since Reporting Services will not install on Vista by default? How do I get it to install?
#2 | Written by James Kovacs about 18 years ago. Reply

Take a look at my previous post on how to install Reporting Services on Windows Vista.
#3 | Written by John Cuthbertson about 18 years ago. Reply

James, I have just spent 2 days reinstalling RS, websites etc etc. I finally got to your blog and using the logonas I solved the problem in 5 minutes. Thanks for some great research
#4 | Written by Faizan about 17 years ago. Reply

Even after running IE as an administrator on vista ultimate i still cant see the "site settings" after typing http://localhost/reports.
localhost is also added in my trusted sites
on other side site settings and other reporting options are visible on my windows xp machine.
#5 | Written by James Kovacs about 17 years ago. Reply

@Faizan – Is Protected Mode disabled for Trusted Sites?
#6 | Written by Caroline about 17 years ago. Reply

Thanks, this post was very helpfull!
#7 | Written by Sergei about 17 years ago. Reply

I installed SQL Server 2005 SP2 on 64 bit on WIN2008 64 bit.

I followed your instructions but i still cant see the "site settings" after typing http://localhost/reports.
If I connected to ReportingServices via SSMS I can see all folders and reports.
#8 | Written by James Kovacs about 17 years ago. Reply

In SSMS, verify that your account has the correct permissions. I’ve had problems in the past on Vista with incorrect permissions preventing me from seeing the Site Settings menu. I haven’t tried installing SSRS on Win2K8 yet. So your mileage may vary.
#9 | Written by Vishal about 17 years ago. Reply

I am using Vista Home Premium.
I installed SSRS 2008 and trying to create reports database on SQL server 2005 but its saying that

The feature :"Using other editions of SQL Server for report data sources and/or the report server database" is not supported in this edition of Reporting Services.
#10 | Written by James Kovacs about 17 years ago. Reply

@Vishal – I haven’t tried out SQL Server 2008 or SSRS 2008. I suspect that SSRS 2008 needs to store its databases in the SQL Server 2008 database engine. I would recommend asking your question in the Reporting Services MSDN Forum:

http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowForum.aspx?ForumID=82&SiteID=1
#11 | Written by Peter Wone about 16 years ago. Reply

Hi James.

Elevating IE works for me but adding localhost/reports to trusted sites doesn’t, even though the browser specifically reports that protected mode is off (as per your illustration). Turning off UAC works, but that’s highly undesirable for obvious reasons.

A question on UAC: do I correctly understand that UAC means I run the user account I specified at logon (a domain account) but my token lacks the local admin privilege? I’m uncertain as to what I should specify when making a role assignment: username, domain\username or machinename\username
Any thoughts?
#12 | Written by James Kovacs about 16 years ago. Reply

@Peter – Your understanding of UAC is correct. UAC strips your user token of the local Administrators group SID as well as a few admin-related privileges. When making role assignments, you should specify the account name, which is likely a domain account, in domain\username form. Did you add your user to the correct SQL Server management groups? By default with SQL Server 2005 SP2, local admins are not by default SQL Server admins.
#13 | Written by Barry about 16 years ago. Reply

Huh?! "Enable Protected Mode" is disabled for Trusted Sites. (It should be enabled for Internet/Local intranet/Restricted sites.)"

Protected mode should be enabled for INTERnet, but not "intranet" – right? I mean, am I protecting ME from mySELF?
"INTRAnet" means ‘inside,’ means "Even a Caveman can browse safely without protected mode."
Or… am I misunderstanding. My understandning (and in the environments in which I’ve worked) is that "intranet" typically is equivalent to "all trusted servers on my local network and/or subnet;" i.e., no need for protected mode.

Again, I may be misunderstanding, or you may have been on drugs 😉 when you made that statement about "intranet" also needing to have ‘protected mode’ enabled.

Please let me know if I misundestood/stand. Thx.
#14 | Written by James Kovacs about 16 years ago. Reply

@Barry – I believe what Microsoft is trying to protect against is the spread of malware once it gets into your intranet. You can always disable protected mode for intranet sites by going into IE… Internet Security and changing the option for Local intranet. (I would guess you can do this through group policy too, though I haven’t checked.) Microsoft is opting for secure by default and only disabling protected mode for sites that you explicitly trust.
#15 | Written by Eyal Shacham about 16 years ago. Reply

Hi James, I installed SSRS 2008 with Vist hme premium. No luck. Even with elevated security IE does not display the seting and properties in the report manager. Could you post screenshots of the ssrs conf (which accounts used for which services and SQL connection to the db? Also, should I define a new Login in SQL db?
#16 | Written by Carl Scarlett about 16 years ago. Reply

Hi James,

I’ve had the same problems with the blank screen on SSRS 2008 on Vista Home Premium with multiple users. The elevated security in IE didn’t do the trick.

In the end I had to disable UAC to gain access the manager. The BUILTIN\Administrators only had the Content Manager role, so I added all the others. I also added my own user (DOMAIN\Username) with all roles. I then enabled UAC once more. This corrected the problem.

I wonder if Windows 7 will be affected like this. I love Vista, but sometimes I feel I have to work as hard as a Linux guy to get things to work properly! *smirk*

Carl
#17 | Written by Minglin Zhou about 15 years ago. Reply

Hi, James,
I am still seeing a blank page when I go to http://localhost/reports I installed SQL Reporting service on Windows 2008 server. Can you help please?
#18 | Written by James Kovacs about 15 years ago. Reply

@Minglin – I honestly haven’t touched Reporting Services in quite awhile. I haven’t tried it at all on Windows Server 2008. I would recommend asking on the SQL Server Reporting Services Forum:

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sqlreportingservices/threads

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