Question

I just got this error and I thought I’d share it so that someone else doesn’t spend an hour trying to figure out what’s gone wrong. I have SQL Server 2008 Express and a WCF service that was working fine. All of a sudden it stopped working. This was the error message

The server encountered an error processing the request. The exception
message is ‘The provider did not return a ProviderManifestToken
string.’. See server logs for more details. The exception stack trace
is:

at
System.Data.Common.DbProviderServices.GetProviderManifestToken(DbConnection
connection) at
System.Data.Entity.ModelConfiguration.Utilities.DbConnectionExtensions.GetProviderInfo(DbConnection
connection, DbProviderManifest& providerManifest) at
System.Data.Entity.DbModelBuilder.Build(DbConnection
providerConnection) at
System.Data.Entity.Internal.LazyInternalContext.CreateModel(LazyInternalContext
internalContext) at
System.Data.Entity.Internal.RetryLazy2.GetValue(TInput input) at
System.Data.Entity.Internal.LazyInternalContext.InitializeContext() at
System.Data.Entity.Internal.InternalContext.Initialize() at
System.Data.Entity.Internal.LazyInternalContext.get_ObjectContext() at
System.Data.Entity.DbContext.System.Data.Entity.Infrastructure.IObjectContextAdapter.get_ObjectContext()
at lambda_method(Closure , Object ) at
System.Data.Services.Providers.DbContextHelper.GetObjectContext(Object
o) at System.Data.Services.Caching.MetadataCache1.TryLookup(Type
serviceType, Object dataContextInstance) at
System.Data.Services.Providers.BaseServiceProvider.LoadMetadata() at
System.Data.Services.DataService1.CreateMetadataAndQueryProviders(IDataServiceMetadataProvider&
metadataProviderInstance, IDataServiceQueryProvider&
queryProviderInstance, BaseServiceProvider& builtInProvider, Object&
dataSourceInstance) at
System.Data.Services.DataService1.CreateProvider() at
System.Data.Services.DataService1.EnsureProviderAndConfigForRequest()
at System.Data.Services.DataService1.HandleRequest() at
System.Data.Services.DataService`1.ProcessRequestForMessage(Stream
messageBody) at SyncInvokeProcessRequestForMessage(Object , Object[] ,
Object[] ) at
System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.SyncMethodInvoker.Invoke(Object
instance, Object[] inputs, Object[]& outputs) at
System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.DispatchOperationRuntime.InvokeBegin(MessageRpc&
rpc) at
System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.ImmutableDispatchRuntime.ProcessMessage5(MessageRpc&
rpc) at
System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.ImmutableDispatchRuntime.ProcessMessage41(MessageRpc&
rpc) at
System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.ImmutableDispatchRuntime.ProcessMessage4(MessageRpc&
rpc) at
System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.ImmutableDispatchRuntime.ProcessMessage31(MessageRpc&
rpc) at
System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.ImmutableDispatchRuntime.ProcessMessage3(MessageRpc&
rpc) at
System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.ImmutableDispatchRuntime.ProcessMessage2(MessageRpc&
rpc) at
System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.ImmutableDispatchRuntime.ProcessMessage11(MessageRpc&
rpc) at
System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.ImmutableDispatchRuntime.ProcessMessage1(MessageRpc&
rpc) at System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.MessageRpc.Process(Boolean
isOperationContextSet)

Answer 1

The issue was that the SQL Server Windows service somehow was stopped. Upon restarting it, everything worked fine again.