Last night's SharePoint 2010 install troubleshooting - User cannot be found

Last night I was installing SharePoint Foundation 2010 on a Windows 7 x64 machine and I had an error which took me some time to troubleshoot, so I thought I'd share it.

I already had the pre-requisites installed as per the Windows 7 SharePoint 2010 install guide on MSDN and I had a failure on the step 2 of the SharePoint 2010 Products Configuration Wizard and was able to resolve some using Bill Baers Troubleshooting Guide. I also installed the SQL Server 2008 Management Studio Express so I could drop databases easily as required by Bills troubleshooting guide. You have to install the Web Platform Installer to get it and then locate it in the Web Platform tab by selecting Customize under the database section and selecting the checkbox for SQL Server 2008 Management Studio Express.

Issue

Here is the error I got in the log file.

04/07/2010 00:23:34 8 ERR Task configdb has failed with an unknown exception

04/07/2010 00:23:34 8 ERR Exception: Microsoft.SharePoint.SPException: User cannot be found.

   at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPSiteCollection.Add(SPContentDatabase database, SPSiteSubscription siteSubscription, String siteUrl, String title, String description, UInt32 nLCID, String webTemplate, String ownerLogin, String ownerName, String ownerEmail, String secondaryContactLogin, String secondaryContactName, String secondaryContactEmail, String quotaTemplate, String sscRootWebUrl, Boolean useHostHeaderAsSiteName)

   at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPSiteCollection.Add(SPSiteSubscription siteSubscription, String siteUrl, String title, String description, UInt32 nLCID, String webTemplate, String ownerLogin, String ownerName, String ownerEmail, String secondaryContactLogin, String secondaryContactName, String secondaryContactEmail, Boolean useHostHeaderAsSiteName)

   at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPAdministrationWebApplication.CreateDefaultInstance(SqlConnectionStringBuilder administrationContentDatabase, SPWebService adminService, IdentityType identityType, String farmUser, SecureString farmPassword)

   at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPFarm.CreateAdministrationWebService(SqlConnectionStringBuilder administrationContentDatabase, IdentityType identityType, String farmUser, SecureString farmPassword)

   at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPFarm.CreateBasicServices(SqlConnectionStringBuilder administrationContentDatabase, IdentityType identityType, String farmUser, SecureString farmPassword)

   at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPFarm.Create(SqlConnectionStringBuilder configurationDatabase, SqlConnectionStringBuilder administrationContentDatabase, IdentityType identityType, String farmUser, SecureString farmPassword, SecureString masterPassphrase)

   at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.ConfigurationDatabaseTask.CreateOrConnectConfigDb()

   at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.ConfigurationDatabaseTask.Run()

   at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.TaskThread.ExecuteTask()

Solution

I figured the solution by reviewing the ULS logs files at C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\LOGS

The config wizard was creating a default site collection and as part of that it needed to connect to a domain controller and do something with my account. I was using a corporate domain joined machine, but working late at night at home so there was no connection to the domain controller.

I established a VPN connection so that the domain controller was available and then the config was successful.

Hope this helps someone else.