OpsMgr 2007: Discovery Wizard never ends and no computers are discovered

This is kind of a weird one but I came across it the other day and thought it might be worth a quick heads-up.  Normally you wouldn't think this would be a common issue, and in reality it isn't, but with the economy the way it is right now this may be something you eventually run into:

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Issue: You use the Discovery Wizard from the OpsMgr 2007 console on an RMS server and it is unable to discover any computers and never actually finishes.

Cause: This can occur if the owner of the OperationsManager database is deleted.  For example, this can happen if the user who installed OpsMgr is no longer with the company and his or her user account is deleted from the domain.

Resolution: Check the owner of the OperationsManager database by opening the SQL Management studio and going to the
OperationsManager Database properties.  It may not be able to open the database properties and give the error below:

Property Owner is not available for Database '[OperationsManager]'. This property may not exist for this object, or may not be retrievable due to insufficient access rights. (Microsoft.SqlServer.Smo)

For help, click:
https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink?ProdName=Microsoft+SQL+Server\&ProdVer=9.00.3042.00\&Ev
tSrc=Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.ExceptionTemplates.PropertyCannotBeRetrieved
ExceptionText&EvtID=Owner&LinkId=20476

You can check who the owner of the database is by running this query:

sp_helpdb

If you're experiencing this issue then this command will show that OperationsManager DB has a NULL value for the owner column.

You can do a reset of the DB owner to 'sa' with following script:

sp_changedbowner 'sa'

Note: This is just an example and the actual DB owner may vary depending on your specific configuration.  

Then run the query below again to verify the DB owner:

sp_helpdb

Now it should show 'sa' as owner for the Operations Manager database.  Try accessing properties of Operations Manager database again and it should now show the properties successfully.  Assuming it does, restart the SDK service, the Config service and the Health services on the RMS server.  Once you do this discovery should complete successfully.

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Hopefully this isn't a situation you run into but just in case now you'll have an idea on what causes it and how to fix it.  And a special thanks to Milan Jajal for doing the initial work and writing this up.  Thanks Milan!

J.C. Hornbeck | Manageability Knowledge Engineer