A couple of weeks ago I got a new laptop (that went along with my new job) and at the urging of some on my co-workers (and against my better judgement) I installed Vista Enterprise 64-bit on it. And that's another story all together. I also installed SQL Server 2005 (64-bit, naturally) and after fighting with the new IIS 7 on Vista (see this Microsoft Support Article for more info), I managed to get Reporting Services installed too.

However, I had never configured it until today. I brought up the Reporting Services Configuration Manager and focused my attention on the first "red X" in the list, which was the "Report Manager Virtual Directory." I was able to set up the virtual directory, but the damn red X wouldn't turn into a green checkmark no matter what I did. I searched the Internet and found all kind of Reporting Services on Vista horror stories, but no story that fit my exact problem. After looking at the various Reporting Services .config files for clues, I went back to the Configuration Manager window and clicked on the "Report Server Virtual Directory" item, which had a green checkmark. Aha! The damn thing WASN'T set up, even though it had a happy green checkmark. Once I set up both the Report Server and Report Manager virtual directories with the proper application pool settings outlined in the above referenced Microsoft Support article, I was able to complete the Reporting Services configuration and now it works great!

Moral of the story: don't trust green checkmarks - they're not always correct.