The Data Migration Manager encountered an error while setting up the temporary migration database

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Data Migration Manager can be used to import data from other systems into CRM 4.0 and is a vastly improved version over 3.0. This tool can be used to map data into all standard and custom entities and is very simple to use.

However, I ran into a couple of small issues on my first encounter with this tool.

Having made my installation on a different machine to the SQL Server, I immediately encountered security issues. The selected user needs to have full administrative rights to the SQL Server installation. After making the necessary changes to my administrative rights, installation and setup proceeded smoothly, bet then upon sign in I encountered the following error:

The Data Migration Manager encountered an error while setting up the temporary migration database. Restart the data migration manager and try migrating the data again.

With Albert Einstein's looming in the back of my mind I did the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result... Needless to say, it drove me mad.

Interestingly I found that the temporary migration database was actually created on the remote SQL Server.

The accompanying Readme file suggests the folowing:

One possible source of this error message may be the UserReplicationID registry key. You can resolve this issue by deleting the registry key, restarting Data Migration Manager, and signing in again.

You can find this registry key in the following path (depending on your system type):

* 32-bit systems: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Data Migration Wizard
* 64-bit systems: HKLM\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Data Migration Wizard

Unfortunately this did not work for me. My solution was to uninstall and re-install the package, using SQL Server Express on the same machine as the DMM installation. Due to performance issues, we were finally forced to move the entire installation to the local machine hosting the full SQL Server deployment.

It seems this issue was related to the use of DMM with remote access to the temporary migration database. Although my user is a local admin of all machines involved and has full access to SQL Server, I still believe the issue is caused by a lack of security rights to something along the chain.

I've since found that the package will install, but configuration will fail for 64bit SQL Server 2005, even on the local machine. This is entirely unsupported by that application.

See the Dynamics Team Blog for more tips on using and getting the best performance out of DMM and the Dynamics Data Migration Trouble Shooting page.