Are you having issues after upgrading SOLIDWORKS PDM Web2?

Following an upgrade of SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional, you may encounter some odd behavior when accessing the vault through Web2.

If you see any of these symptoms, you may have missed one final step in the upgrade process:

• Login page hanging indefinitely
• Being able to login successfully but not able to navigate between folders
• Either hanging indefinitely or being sent back to the Login page when trying to view any details of a file
• Or, encountering the error “Could not open database“.

These are all symptoms of the same issue, the Web2 application pool using the wrong identity.

This most commonly happens following an upgrade of the software.  That’s because, during the upgrade, the application pool will be reset to the default “Network Service” identity and must be modified back to use the Windows Profile that it was using before the upgrade.

In order for Web2 to work properly, the application pool identity must be set to use a Windows Profile that has:

1. Has logged into the vault and selected a folder in the vault at least once.
2. Has been added as a member of the IIS_IUSRS group.
3. Is a member of the local Administrators group.

Following any upgrade of the SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional Web2 Server software, make sure the following steps are performed:

Step 1:  Open Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager, go to the “Application Pools“, select “SOLIDWORKS PDM Web2” and click “Advanced Settings…“.

Application Ppols SOLIDWORKS PDM Web2

Step 2:  Select the “Identity” field and click on the “…” button.

Identify Network Service

Step 3:  Select “Custom account” and click “Set…“, then enter the credentials for the Windows User account that should be used for Web2.

Set the credentials for the Windows User account