Had a weird problem on a dev box. Whenever I launched Synchronization Service Manager, and sometimes even just when opening the properties of a MA, everything would stop while the server seemingly tried to install something in the background. Running taskmgr.exe revealed Microsoft.IdentityManagement.SolutionPackUtility.exe and TrustedInstaller.exe were running.
At first I was just killing these tasks and then the Sync Service Manager would run properly, but then I started working with the Portal as well – and I noticed that, increasingly, I was getting 503 Service Not Available errors when I tried to access the Portal.
The first couple of times it happened I reinstalled the Portal by using the “Change” option in Add/Remove Programs. This got it working again - but before long I’d have to restart the Sync Service Manager, I’d get that whole thing with Microsoft.IdentityManagement.SolutionPackUtility.exe again, and immediately after an inaccessible Portal with 503 errors. Clearly the two problems were linked!
Eventually I solved the problem by reinstalling Sharepoint. I had to completely uninstall WSS and the Windows Internal Database. I then reinstalled WSS and the FIM Service and Portal. I used my original FIMService database so I didn’t lose any of my work.
I did see Tim’s post on the technet wiki with a similar sounding problem but I didn’t see the job definition in Sharepoint that he mentions, so it wasn’t exactly the same root cause.
