Darcy...
I reopened the call and escalated it. I worked via WebEx with a tech who advised me to delete just about every PTC application that ever existed on my workstation. Even though I had just installed Creo 2.0 M120 as a test, and didn't want to undo hours worth of installations, I did it anyway. I wiped out everything and re-installed Creo 2.0 M120 from scratch using the stock PTC installer and customizing nothing. When I say I wiped out everything, that includes backing out all versions of CreoPlatform in reverse order until they were all gone. I even took out Mathcad and Creo Direct which should have nothing to do with this problem.
I setup and launched Creo 2.0 M120 with absolutely no options, no configs, and no customizations of any kind (config.pro and config.sup were stock). The Windchill server was not registered. The PTC_WF_ROOT variable was left "stock", too. This is as "vanilla" as it gets. I selected Learning Connector... and got the same exact error.
I scoured the registry for any mention of Learning Connector, Creo, Creoagent, or the URL giving me the error. I found several references. The most notable was this... note that it's in the HKCU/Software/Microsoft/InternetExplorer/Main/FeatureControl section of the registry.
According to this, Creo, Creo agent, Internet Explorer and Learning Connector all see my browser as "11000" which, per Microsoft, is the correct code for Internet Explorer 11. I have reset the values back to 8, 9, and 10 (8000, 9000, and 10000 respectively) as a test. As soon as you fire up Creo, the values automatically reset back to 11000 which indicates an intelligent mechanism within Creo which is adjusting these values dynamically.
That I can find, there are very, very few other places within the registry that seem suspicious. I am not able to reset the Internet Explorer browser using the "Reset" button as that is disabled by Group Policy (even though I am an Admin). Still, I think this is a longshot. This tool used to work at Creo 2.0 M080 prior to the upgrade to Internet Explorer 11. We're now on Creo 2.0 M100 and there's no reason why the Learning Connector should have stopped working. The only difference I can point to is a migration from Windchill Pro/INTRALINK 10.1 M030 to Windchill PDMLink 10.2 M020 which occurred two weeks ago.
We previously had the Help Center files installed locally. I'm more than willing to install PrecisionLMS locally, too... but I no longer saw that option. The old config option to change the location of the help center seemed to be obsolete which I took to mean that customers can no longer perform a local install of the help files nor Precision LMS. I must have assumed badly.
My support tech asked me to de-escalate my call... which was apparently not possible. So, he closed it and supposedly reopened it. He's going to reassign it to someone else. I'm not sure how this is going to help... but I am playing the game.
I can't come here and gripe and complain and then not play ball with the tech support people... so I am doing what has been asked even though, so far, the effort has been a waste of time.
I am not the only person experiencing this issue... our entire 'company' is... which is why this is such an important issue.
Just today we received a brand new, out of the box, "never been touched" computer. It has all Microsoft patches and is as clean as the driven snow. I installed a stock version of Creo 2.0 M120 on it... with nothing else. No Windchill server has been registered. No other Creo software has ever been installed. We'll see tomorrow morning if the Learning Connector runs or not. If it does not run on this completely new-off-the-loading-dock Dell computer, I'm not sure where we go next.