During the day, you receive the following error message when you attempt to login to the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 server:

"Invalid Action: The selected action was not valid"

Additionally, the following error is seen with the Dev error is enabled:

MSCRM Error Report:< 

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Error: Exception of type 'System.Web.HttpUnhandledException' was thrown.


Error Number: 0x8004A106


Error Message: The key specified to compute a hash value is expired, only active keys are valid. Expired Key : CrmKey(Id:198367cb-f875-de11-bbf1-0017a446b2fa, ScaleGroupId:00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000, KeyType:CrmWRPCTokenKey, Expired:True, ValidOn:07/21/2009 13:17:10, ExpiresOn:08/23/2009 13:17:10, CreatedOn:07/21/2009 13:17:10, CreatedBy:NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE


Error Details: The key specified to compute a hash value is expired, only active keys are valid. Expired Key : CrmKey(Id:198367cb-f875-de11-bbf1-0017a446b2fa, ScaleGroupId:00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000, KeyType:CrmWRPCTokenKey, Expired:True, ValidOn:07/21/2009 13:17:10, ExpiresOn:08/23/2009 13:17:10, CreatedOn:07/21/2009 13:17:10, CreatedBy:NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE

Cause

This error can occur when the CRM Asynchronous Service (MSCRMAsyncService) is not started on the CRM server.

Resolution

Use the following steps to restart the Microsoft CRM Asynchronous Processing Service on the CRM server:

• Launch the Services.msc console on the CRM server. (or click Start, then click All Programs, then click on Administrative tools and then select Services.)
• Select the service named "Microsoft CRM Asynchronous Processing Service".
• Right click the service and select the Start.

Once the Microsoft CRM Asynchronous Processing Service is sucessfully started, verify that you can now login to Dynamics CRM.

Solution

This behaviour could raise again after a while for the following reason: after the first fail there could be an event error (in Event Viewer) in the Application error records view: "Current active key (KeyType : CrmWRPCTokenKey) is expired. This can indicate that a key is not being regenerated properly...":

To completely fix this stop of this important service we should do the following actions:

1. Open Command Prompt (cmd.exe).
2. Go to: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Dynamics CRM\Tools-
3. Run the following command: Microsoft.Crm.Tools.WRPCKeyRenewal.exe /R.
4. Restart IIS (through services.msc it's quicker).