Generic “An error has occurred” when loading personal option pane and other errors

Hi All,

We are using Dynamics CRM 2016 on premise. We were previously on version 8.0 and recently installed SP1 (and 1.1). Yes I know this is incredibly old but for reasons I cannot get in to we have essentially been version locked for the past few years.

After upgrading to 8.1.1 we have run into several issues however.

1. When trying to open personal options this message is shown:

   An error has occurred.

   Try this action again. If the problem continues, check the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Community for solutions or contact your organization’s Microsoft Dynamics CRM Administrator. Finally, you can contact Microsoft Support.

   Checking event viewer w3wp.exe is recording a “NullReferenceException” somewhere in my.crm.instance.com:443/…/personalsettings.aspx

2. When trying to open “System Settings” under “Settings” -> “Administration” -> “System Settings” the same generic “An error has occurred” message appears. Although this time event viewer records this error: 

   Exception type: HttpCompileException
   Exception message: c:Program FilesMicrosoft Dynamics CRMCRMWebToolsSystemSettingsDialogssystemsettings.aspx(2381): error CS0103: The name ‘IsRelevanceSearchPreviewEnabled’ does not exist in the current context

   in my.crm.instance.com:443/…/systemsettings.aspx

3. Activities and Notes no longer load in the social pane. Posts and KB articles both load fine. There are no events shown in the event log for either of these. Digging through the activities pane with dev tools I can see a bunch of empty “TR” HTML tags where the content usually goes. I can still go to associated activities and see records but the social pane does not load them.

Relevant screenshots attached. Any help is appreciated.