Why Should “Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online E-mail Router” Not Be Used For CRM On-Premise?

Have you ever done some software installation that seemed normal at the time, only to discover later that it is not so? We’d one such experience very recently and to find about keep reading.

We’d a requirement of configuring email router for a Dynamics CRM online instance. We’ve downloaded the correct email router software but installed it on a machine which is already hosting On-Premise version. This is where the catastrophe struck. We were not able to configure the email router due to certain settings not available in the Exchange server and decided to let it go for the time being.

Afterwards we noticed that the On-Premise version stopped working and “404 – Not found” message was displayed by the browser. This is where the arduous journey of finding and fixing the issue started.

1) CRM Asynchronous Processing Service

With the experience gained over the years; we check the asynchronous processing service first whenever CRM throws tantrums and we hit pay dirt here: service was stopped. When we tried to start the service it tried for a while and then displayed the below message:

The Microsoft CRM Asynchronous Processing Service on Local Computer started and then stopped. Some services stop automatically if they are not in use by other services or programs.

Obvious enough, above message didn’t help us in identifying the issue.

2) Reset IIS

We were still stuck at “404” error but occasionally (on each reset) we saw a strange error:

Microsoft.Crm.LocatorService..ctor()

Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.

Exception Details: System.MethodAccessException: Microsoft.Crm.LocatorService..ctor()

Source Error:
An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below.

Stack Trace:
[MethodAccessException: Microsoft.Crm.LocatorService..ctor()]
Microsoft.Crm.Application.Utility.Util.IsLive() +0
Microsoft.Crm.MainApplication.Application_OnStart() +795

Needless to say, above is also not so helpful, but it gave some other ideas. Further investigation gave many options, none of them worked in our case.

3) Repair CRM instance

Since none of the above worked, we decided to repair the CRM, thinking that it will self repair. But the pre requisite check stopped with:

The “PrivUserGroup” group is not specified.

Above group exists in AD and the user who has installed CTM is a member of that group. So we were back to where we’ve started.

4) Event Viewer

Time and again this has proved to be a good friend and this time also it didn’t fail us. Though it didn’t give a direct solution one line in the stack trace attracted our attention:Microsoft.Crm.MainApplication.Application_OnStart().

Googling further we stumbled across the below link which proved to be a life saver:Problems with Email Router Online and CRM 4.0

We’ve followed the exact steps and replaced the Microsoft.crm.dll and reset the IIS again. This time we got a more weird error:
Exception message: Method not found: ‘Boolean Microsoft.Crm.RegControl.IsInHosterContext()’.

Then, we’ve tried to repair the CRM instance and this time the pre-requisites checker didn’t complain and the repair process completed successfully and we were able to access the CRM!!!

Final Thoughts

This link: Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online E-mail Router states that,
Do not install this version if you use an on-premise or service-provider edition of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. There is another version available:
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 E-mail Router For On-Premise & Service Provider Editions

But who would’ve expected that installing Online E-mail router replaces core CRM DLL? Anyways, it required 4 hours to find the issue and fix it. Hope this will be helpful to someone and bring down the time spent.