Application Catalog Failed – “Application installation not started”

The application could not be installed. The most common reason is that software does not support the version of Windows currently installed on your computer. You can try starting the application installation from the Application Catalog again. If the problem continues, contact your network administrator

In the ConfigMgrSoftwareCatalog.log Silverlight log file (found at "C:\Users\mattsha\AppData\LocalLow\Microsoft\Silverlight\is\j2mecbot.hwg\v2uabsdl.022\1\s\s5i52ebhc445n0s2jyvmx5askg5zbspajpmi3e4bvujwll1luiaaaeda\f\ConfigMgrLogs\ConfigMgrSoftwareCatalog.log"), the following three lines were found.

[1][06/23/2014 17:46:43] :ApplicationDetailViewModel.RequestPolicyAssingmentForInstallCallback-Error:The policy information is empty or an error ocurred!

[1][06/23/2014 17:46:43] :ApplicationDetailViewModel.UpdatePageView:PageViewMode changed to:FastInstallError

[1][06/23/2014 17:46:43] :FastInstallPageView:Create Page View FastInstallError

Also in the ServicePortalWebSite.log (found "F:\Program Files\SMS_CCM\CMApplicationCatalog\Logs\ServicePortalWebSite.log") the following two errors

[28, PID:6060][06/23/2014 17:59:54] :The web method threw a fault exception - System.ServiceModel.FaultException`1[Microsoft.ConfigurationManager.SoftwareCatalog.Service.Faults5000.ServiceError]: Invalid parameter

[28, PID:6060][06/23/2014 17:59:54] :System.ServiceModel.FaultException`1[[Microsoft.ConfigurationManager.SoftwareCatalog.Service.Faults5000.ServiceError, Microsoft.ConfigurationManager.SoftwareCatalog.Website.PortalClasses, Version=5.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35]]: Invalid parameter

I spent agestrying to troubleshoot this issue without success, and gave up for a short time while I did other things.

A week later I was testing the Collection Evaluator Viewer program that comes with the R2 toolset and found that it was unable to connect directly to the database with a very similar error

A connection was successfully established with the server, then then an error occurred during the login process. (provider: SSL Provider, error:0 – The certificate chain was issued by an authority that is not trusted)

So now I can kind of tell that the issue is actually with the SQL db side, not necessarily ConfigMgr or the App Catalog site server roles.

Next, I checked to make sure SQL is not forcing an encrypted connection using SQL Service Manager.

All good there, however under the certificate tab I noticed we’ve got a self-signed certificate

And low-and-behold the certificate is having problems

I opened the IIS console to view the self-signed certificate

Exported the certificate

Import it into the Trusted Root Authorities

After the import, I attempted again to connect using the Collection Evaluation Viewer, this time it was successful as SQL now trusts the certificate

Back to the Application Catalog, and everything is now working nicely!