Cannot connect with Controller ... the channel 'tcp' is already registered

Hi all,
When I try to "Administer Test Controllers..." within VS2005, I get the following error message:

Visual Studio Team System8

For what it's worth, I uninstalled 64bit ASP.Net, and reinstalled 32Bit ASP.Net into IIS, and I still get the same problem. I'm at a loss how to continue, or where to look next....

Pete

Is 'ammadopc002' the name of the controller And Administer Controllers the dialog never actually comes up

The dialog will connect to the last used controller, which is stored in

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0\EnterpriseTools\QualityTools\RunConfig\RecentlyUsedControllerList

Is this is not the right controller name you can fix the registry so the dialog won't automatically go to it.

The dialog connects via a remoting channel, the same remoting channel used to start a run and it is also used in the Test Runs window. It sounds between these three different code paths the channel is getting registered twice, or that somehow the order matters. Can you connect to the controller from the test runs window Also try restarting VS and going straight to the Controller Admin dialog instead of running a load test first.

Ed.

Hi Ed,
Thanks for the reply... I was beginning to think this was falling on deaf ears!

I will answer your questions one by one:

- Yes, ammadopc002 is the name of the test controller. It is also my local machine, and the service is running.
- Correct - the Administer Controllers dialog never comes up: I get the two OK dialogs with the error messages detailed at the start of this thread
- I looked at that registry key, and it is correct

- I start a fresh instance of VS2005 (with no other instances running), with no solution loaded. I open the "Test Runs" window using Test|Windows|Test Runs. I then select "ammadopc002" from the drop down, and a progress dialog comes up with the text "Connecting to machine ammadopc002". This progress bar never completes, and the "Cancel" button is greyed out. I need to manually kill VS after 2-3 minutes.

- I start a fresh instance of VS2005 (no other instances, no solution loaded). I go straight to the "Admininister Test Controllers", and the same error occurs as in my original post.

- I tried one more test with a fresh instance of VS2005, but this time I made sure to stop the Visual Studio Team Controller service first. Again, I get the same error as in my original thread.

Hopefully you can suggest something else I could try....

Pete

Sorry Pete, I'm not sure what is going on.

Are VS and the controller on the same machine Is the controller machine 64 bit Can you view the Controller Admin dialog from another client machine

Regarding the counters, there's a known problem collecting 64 bit counters from a 32 bit machine. Could that be the problem

Ed.

Thanks for replying, Ed..

To answer your questions

- VS and the controller are on the same machine.
- The machine is 64bit
- Yes, I _can_ connect to the controller from another machine

Regarding counters, as my thread indicates, I was trying to get the counters to work and had unregistered 32bit ASP.Net and enabled 64bit ASP.Net. (I had not realised there was an issue with 64bit counters). It may have something to do with this, as I was able to administer the controller before that messing - but I cannot say for certain that it was working preciely _before_ I started messing, but it seems likely.

Any other ideas

Pete

I really don't know why you're seeing the problem connecting to the local controller and don't know where to go next. Can you contact support I wonder if there are known issues with .NET remoting that cause this.

The problem with reading the counters is that the 64 bit OS is configured to remotely read 64 bit counters, but you want the 32 bit counters. I got this answer from a dev on the x64 team:

How to read 32-bit counters on a x64 system

When remotely reading performance counters the Performance Logs and Alerts service on the remote system communicates with the Remote Registry service on the target x64 system.   By default the Remote Registry service that is loaded is the 64-bit version and it looks to the 64-bit registry structure, causing the x64 system to send back the 64-bit counter information to the remote system, even if the remote system is a 32-bit OS.  Thus we are unable to remote monitor any 32-bit counters on the x64 system.

Reg path

Param

Old Value

New Value

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\RemoteRegistry

ImagePath

%SystemRoot%\System32\svchost.exe -k regsvc

%SystemRoot%\SysWow64\svchost.exe -k regsvc

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\RemoteRegistry\Parameters

ServiceDll

%SystemRoot%\System32\regsvc.dll

%SystemRoot%\SysWow64\regsvc.dll

 Copy these commands into a .reg file and run it:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\RemoteRegistry]

"ImagePath"="%SystemRoot%\SysWow64\svchost.exe -k regsvc”

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\RemoteRegistry\Parameters]

"ServiceDll"="%SystemRoot%\SysWow64\regsvc.dll"

This will load the 32-bit version of the Remote Registry service, which looks to the 32-bit registry structure, causing the x64 system to send back the 32-bit counter information to the remote system.

Further testing showed that remote admiistration tools, like Regedit, Computer Management, System Information, etc., all still work even with the 32-bit version of Remote Regitry loaded on the x64 system.

In addition to the registry changes please make sure to follow-up with a reboot of the machine where you changed the registry and also your load test controller (although it might be good enough just restarting the controller service).

Finally, the ASP.NET counter category will have the version appended to it. So you need to open <installdir>\common7\IDE\Templates\LoadTest\CounterSets\ASP.NET.counterset, and change

<CounterCategory Name="ASP.NET">

To

<CounterCategory Name="ASP.NET v2.0.50727">

Hey Guys,

I'm having the exact same problem as above -
When I try to "Administer Test Controllers..." I get the error message:

Cannot connect with 'Controller', If the controller is not started you may be able to start it by clicking the restart rig button.

The following error was received
the channel 'tcp' is already registered.
>> click OK

The channel 'tcp' is not registered with remoting services
>> click OK

The admin controllers windows never appears.

I can connect to the test controller from another machine here.

I have followed this thread but I’m still getting the same message...

If anyone can help it would be seriously appreciated!

Thanks,

Paul

Ditto; I have the same problem connecting from a 32 bit vista machine. Last update on my machine was for KB929916

http://support.microsoft.com/ kbid=929916 which seems to have been for Remote Code Execution on .Net 2.0

Has this or another update broken remoting