Runtime Error: The parameter is incorrect. (The Local ServerFarm cannot be detected. Your access may be invalid.)

  • Article

You might get this error when you are using the Business Data Catalog to crawl a business application. Various processes load the Business Data Catalog whenever data access to line-of-business (LOB) systems is required:

  • For Web Parts, the Business Data Catalog is loaded by the Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) worker process.

  • For Enterprise Search, the Business Data Catalog is loaded up by the index daemon process.

To perform anything useful, the Business Data Catalog must access the Shared Services Provider (SSP) database, which is its metadata repository. The Business Data Catalog asks the configuration database for information about the location of the SSP database and how to connect to it. Unfortunately, the configuration database cannot be accessed by processes that are running as Local System; as a result, Office SharePoint Server 2007 returns this error that it cannot determine the Local Farm configuration information. To resolve this error, check if the Office SharePoint Server Search Windows Service is running as the Local Service account, and if so, change it to another account with sufficient rights to the configuration database.