SCOM R2 Web Console based Health Explorer issue: Only the buttons are shown, rest is grayed out

Bumped into this strange issue at a customers site.

Issue
SCOM R2 in place with the Web Console, hosted by the RMS so Windows Authentication was being used. Web Console ran like clock work. Only the Health Explorer gave some issues. Ran fine on the RMS but outside that server, it didn’t run good. Only the buttons were shown but the rest of the screen was grayed out, like this:

Also the RMS showed this error in the OpsMgr Event Log: EventID 10, source: Web Console. Description: bla bla bla Unhandled asynchronous postback error occured…

Things I tried to remedy it
No matter what I tried, nothing helped:

• Recycled App pool;
• ResetIIS cmd;
• Rebooted RMS;
• Tried the Web Console with NetBIOS names and later with FQDN;
• Repaired ASP.NET Ajax (required for running web based Health Explorer).

But all to no avail.

What finally worked
Time for another approach. When more sophisticated measures don’t seem to land it was time for a drastic approach: the REMOVAL of the Web Console and afterwards, a new installation.

This can be done easily. Just run setup, select Modify and deselect the Web Console. Within a few minutes the Web Console is gone. Rerun setup and select Modify again. Now select the Web Console, the required type of authentication and a few minutes later a new Web Console is present, all without requiring a reboot of the RMS :).

And now the Web based Health Explorer runs like clock work again, from any server or workstation:

Even though I don’t like approaches like these (I still don’t know what caused it) sometimes measures like these are required. Fix it and move on to another more interesting issue :).