FAQ: SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services fails after installing SQL Server 2005

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After installing any component of SQL Server 2005 Beta 2 or Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1 on a computer with an existing installation of SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services, Reporting Services may fail with the following error:

The report server cannot decrypt the symmetric key used to access sensitive
or encrypted data in a report server database. You must either restore a backup key
or delete all encrypted content and then restart the service.
Check the documentation for more information. (rsReportServerDisabled).

To resolve this problem, you must use the rsactivate utility to reinitialize the report server. Follow these steps:

1/ Start the Report Server Windows service if it is not already running. For more information, see "Starting and Stopping the Report Server Service" in Books Online.

2/ Click Start, click Run, type cmd in the text box, and then click OK.

3/ At the command prompt, type rsactivate -r. For more information, see "rsactivate Utility" in SQL Server 2005 Books Online.

4/ Restart IIS.

-Jeffrey Baker
SQL Server Setup Development