Troubleshoot common installation problems

Problems on installation

• SSL Certificate Requirements

  Problem: An existing installed certificate cannot be selected when configuring installation properties for the first time, or when running the PI Web API Admin Utility.

  Solution: The certificate must meet the following requirements to be selected:

  • The certificate must be installed in the Personal Store of the Local Machine.

  • The certificate must have a valid chain of trust.

  • The certificate must not be expired.

  • The certificate must have a private key.

  • The certificate must be an SHA-2 certificate.

    You can run the PI Web API Admin Utility with the verbose logging option to determine why a certificate cannot be selected. For more information, see Verbose logging.

• Installation Fails Unexpectedly

  Problem: During silent installation, invalid inputs can cause setup to fail.

  Solution: Re-run the PI Web API setup from the command line, and specify verbose log output to discover the root cause of the problem:

  msiexec /l*v c:\piwebapisetup.log /i
  c:\path\to\piwebapi.msi

  Problem: During installation on a computer that is not connected to a domain, installation can fail unexpectedly when a remote PI AF server is selected for the configuration store. If the user manually enters credentials to connect to the PI AF server when selecting a server to store configuration, those credentials cannot be retrieved after installation begins. This causes the installation to fail.

  Solution: Any of the following approaches will mitigate the problem:

  • Ensure that the username used for installation on the PI Web API host also exists on the PI AF server, and that the passwords are the same.

  • Add credentials to the remote PI AF server in the installing user’s Windows Credentials Store.

  • Install PI Web API on the same host as the PI AF server.

• Register PI Web API with AIM Server job fails during PI Web API Installation Configuration

  Problem: During PI Web API Installation Configuration the Register PI Web API with AIM Server job fails with the following note: "Failed to get Discover Document from the AIM Server. Error connecting to https://{AIM Server FDQN}/identitymanager/.well-known/openid-configuration. An error occurred while sending the request."

  Solution: Check your OIDC Options entered during installation to ensure your entries are correct.

  Also, on the local machine where you are installing PI Web API, verify that the AIM Server root certificate has been imported into the Trusted Root Certification Authorities certificate store.

Problems on uninstallation

• Windows Service disabled but not uninstalled

  Problem: On uninstallation, the Windows Service is not removed. It is, however, disabled.

  Solution: This is the expected behavior if a file on which the Windows Service depends is locked or in use. The dependent file and the service are removed the next time the computer is rebooted.

• Requesting to close many applications

  Problem: When uninstalling PI Web API, if the PI Web API Windows Service is not yet stopped, the following window is displayed:

  

  Usually, the window displays only one application, which is the PI Web API application. This is normal behavior. Select Automatically close applications and attempt to restart them after setup is complete and click OK.

  However, if the Windows Event Viewer is open when the uninstallation starts, the window might show many other applications:

  

  Solution: Click Cancel to terminate the uninstallation process, close the Windows Event Viewer, and then rerun the uninstallation.