Question

We started getting the ‘Object reference not set to an instance of an object’ error when accessing any reports in our SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services.

If we go to the report designer and debug it, it works.

I haven’t worked much with reporting services, and I don’t really know where to start looking. How can I track down the problem?

EDIT

These reports have been working for months. They just suddenly started showing this error.

EDIT 2

Found this in event viewer:

Event Type:    Warning
Event Source:   ASP.NET 2.0.50727.0
Event Category: Web Event 
Event ID:   1309
Date:       6/11/2009
Time:       10:01:06 AM
User:       N/A
Computer:   CHONGA
Description:
Event code: 3005 
Event message: An unhandled exception has occurred. 
Event time: 6/11/2009 10:01:06 AM 
Event time (UTC): 6/11/2009 2:01:06 PM 
Event ID: 42be336a7b014eab84402a885be04fc2 
Event sequence: 437 
Event occurrence: 28 
Event detail code: 0 
 
Application information: 
    Application domain: /LM/W3SVC/10/root/Reports-7-128891533489230722 
    Trust level: RosettaMgr 
    Application Virtual Path: /Reports 
    Application Path: C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.3\Reporting Services\ReportManager\ 
    Machine name: CHONGA
 
Process information: 
    Process ID: 4948 
    Process name: w3wp.exe 
    Account name: NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE 
 
Exception information: 
    Exception type: NullReferenceException 
    Exception message: Object reference not set to an instance of an object. 
 
Request information: 
    Request URL: http://chonga/Reports/Reserved.ReportViewerWebControl.axd?OpType=StyleSheet&Version=2005.090.1399.00 
    Request path: /Reports/Reserved.ReportViewerWebControl.axd 
    User host address: 127.0.0.1 
    User: CHONGA\Administrator 
    Is authenticated: True 
    Authentication Type: Negotiate 
    Thread account name: NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE 
 
Thread information: 
    Thread ID: 1 
    Thread account name: NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE 
    Is impersonating: True 
    Stack trace:    at Microsoft.Reporting.WebForms.WebRequestHelper.GetExceptionForMoreInformationNode(XmlNode moreInfo, XmlNamespaceManager namespaces)
   at Microsoft.Reporting.WebForms.WebRequestHelper.ExceptionFromWebResponse(Exception e)
   at Microsoft.Reporting.WebForms.ServerReport.ServerUrlRequest(Boolean isAbortable, String url, Stream outputStream, String& mimeType, String& fileNameExtension)
   at Microsoft.Reporting.WebForms.ServerReport.GetStyleSheet(String styleSheetName)
   at Microsoft.Reporting.WebForms.ReportServerStyleSheetOperation.PerformOperation(NameValueCollection urlQuery, HttpResponse response)
   at Microsoft.Reporting.WebForms.HttpHandler.ProcessRequest(HttpContext context)
   at System.Web.HttpApplication.CallHandlerExecutionStep.System.Web.HttpApplication.IExecutionStep.Execute()
   at System.Web.HttpApplication.ExecuteStep(IExecutionStep step, Boolean& completedSynchronously)

Answer 1

I fixed my problem by doing this:

https://serverfault.com/questions/24744/reinstall-reporting-services-2005/24811#24811