Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

SharePoint 3.0 and MOSS 2007 Service Pack 1 Update

I had a number of problems installing SharePoint 3.0 Service Pack 1 and then Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Service Pack 1. In fact, I managed to put my server completely out of action and I have been trying to fix it off and on for a couple of weeks (I have been on holiday). This being my only day in for the rest of this year, I thought I should give it another go, as I did not want the server down for another week...

Well, I found a little called kb841216 that describes the problem:

"0x80040E14" or "HTTP 500" error message when you connect to your Windows SharePoint Services Web site after you install a Windows SharePoint Services service pack or a security update

The reason I get the errors is that the content databases are not at the same version as the application files causing an inability for SharePoint to read the database. You can solve this by running a nice little stsadm command:

cd /d %commonprogramfiles%\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\60\Bin

stsadm -o upgrade -forceupgrade

This may not fix your problems, but it sure fixed mine....

Now to get the Virus Protection problems solved....

posted @ Monday, December 31, 2007 10:10 AM | Feedback (0) | Filed Under [ Sharepoint Work ]

Festive holiday studying

I am sorry to tell you all that I am now (as of Friday past) off for the holiday period. With a little luck and some saved holidays I will not be back in the office until the 3rd January 2008 :) I will be in the office for damage control on the 31st, but apart from that I am a free man...

Well, I have been looking after my daughter and playing my XBOX and generally faffing around with a lot of miscellaneous Christmas stuff online. I have still not got my Sharepoint 2007 development box working after the Service Pack 1 / McAfee fandangle, but I am hopping that I can get it done at some point this week, if for nothing else but piece of mind...

I am keeping up with my feed reading, an I came across an article on the Visual Studio Magazine site that highlights the little known uses of WPF. The author (Kathleen Dollard) highlights the things that I thought WPF was for anyway (but largely ignored) and its benefits over WinForms. I think that Kathleen has hit the nail right on the head that WPF will be the way foreword for future .NET application development, but it does have a steep learning curve and it is different from the way that we have built applications in the past. I have resigned myself to learn this black art of WPF and increase my skill set with this worthwhile weapon in my arsenal.

I can only hope that Kathleen Dollard and other experts provide the same level and topics of articles, and like Kathleen said, Microsoft should also push its developers to show off WPF in this way.

So its WPF for me this holiday...

I will leave you with the "Hinshelwood family Christmas elf's" or "me as scrooge" if you are on the other Christmas spirit :)

P.S. Yippee, 200 posts...Just in time for the New Year...

posted @ Tuesday, December 18, 2007 9:26 PM | Feedback (1) | Filed Under [ XBOX 360 Personal Sharepoint Work ]

No love between McAfee Enterprise and MOSS 2007

Well I think I have found the root of the problem with my Microsoft office SharePoint Server 2007 dev box! It was McAfee  plain and simple.

Event Type:    Error
Event Source:    Windows SharePoint Services 3 Search
Event Category:    Gatherer
Event ID:    2424
Date:        13/12/2007
Time:        09:36:06
User:        N/A
Computer:    GLA1VS09
Description:
The update cannot be started because the content sources cannot be accessed. Fix the errors and try the update again.

Context: Application 'Search', Catalog 'index file on the search server Search'

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

I get the above error about the Search Catalog repeatedly during the installation of SP1, and wrapped around it I get a bunch of IRC port block information items from McAfee. This is more than coincidence and I have requested that our infrastructure team remove McAfee from all SharePoint servers so we don't have this kind of problem in the future.

Now, McAfee say that they support SharePoint Services 3.0, but MOSS has a bunch of extra features (Enterprise Search being one) that are not around in WSS. It seams that there are specific versions of Anti-Virus products for SharePoint Portal Servers and for good reason...

Hopefully I can get this sorted soon.

posted @ Thursday, December 13, 2007 11:22 AM | Feedback (3) | Filed Under [ Sharepoint Work ]

Installing Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Service Pack 1 (SP1)

• wssv3sp1-kb936988-x86-fullfile-en-us.exe

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=4191A531-A2E9-45E4-B71E-5B0B17108BD2&displaylang=en#filelist

Not realy installing updates, more like unpacking...

Ah, the usual fun... Good thin this is on a dev box otherwise I would need to be restarting services out of hours...or just tell my users it was a tempourary glitch

Got loads of options, but no way to change them...typical service pack build of the base installer...Not a problem with me, familiar. Makes those production guys feel at home.

Well, first attempt failed. I will try a reboot and see if there are any pending updates or just general trash interfering. If you have ever had to read a SharePoint install log, you will know that they are next to useless. Roll on TFS install style logs for SharePoint. Hint, hint...

Uoh..Now this could either be really bad, or really good. I just tried to run WSS 3.0 SP1 again and I was told it was already installed...

UPDATE:

Check out this post for a solution that fixed my problems...

posted @ Thursday, December 13, 2007 11:01 AM | Feedback (32) | Filed Under [ Sharepoint Work ]

Installing The 2007 Microsoft Office Servers Service Pack 1 (SP1) ...Again...

So far it is exactly the same show as with the WSS update. Installing updates before moving onto the main feature... And it did not ask me to install WSS SP1 this time.. That is another one of those mixed signs...

The installation for MOSS SP1 is identical to that of WSS SP1 so I foresee no problems...

Well, except maybe the same one that I has from WSS SP1. The message clearly states, as it did in WSS SP1 that I should correct the problem and run the update again, but if I run it again I am told that it is already installed! WTF?

here ist he relevent section of the log file (see what I mean about Sharepoint Logs) in the hopes that someone else has had the same problem:

12/13/2007 10:01:42  7  INF                        Entering function ServiceHelper.Stop
12/13/2007 10:01:42  7  INF                          Trying to stop service OSearch and waiting 120 sec to do so
12/13/2007 10:01:42  7  INF                          service OSearch is Running, so will stop it
12/13/2007 10:01:42  7  INF                          stopping service OSearch (it may already be stopped)
12/13/2007 10:03:42  7  ERR                          An exception was encountered when trying to stop service OSearch
12/13/2007 10:03:42  7  INF                          Entering function Common.BuildExceptionInformation
12/13/2007 10:03:42  7  INF                            Entering function Common.BuildExceptionMessage
12/13/2007 10:03:42  7  INF                              Entering function StringResourceManager.GetResourceString
12/13/2007 10:03:42  7  INF                                Resource id to be retrieved is ExceptionInfo for language English (United States)
12/13/2007 10:03:42  7  INF                                Resource retrieved id ExceptionInfo is An exception of type {0} was thrown.  Additional exception information: {1}
12/13/2007 10:03:42  7  INF                              Leaving function StringResourceManager.GetResourceString
12/13/2007 10:03:42  7  INF                            Leaving function Common.BuildExceptionMessage
12/13/2007 10:03:42  7  INF                          Leaving function Common.BuildExceptionInformation
12/13/2007 10:03:42  7  ERR                          An exception of type System.ServiceProcess.TimeoutException was thrown.  Additional exception information: Time out has expired and the operation has not been completed.
System.ServiceProcess.TimeoutException: Time out has expired and the operation has not been completed.
   at System.ServiceProcess.ServiceController.WaitForStatus(ServiceControllerStatus desiredStatus, TimeSpan timeout)
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.ServiceHelper.Stop(String serviceName)
12/13/2007 10:03:42  7  INF                        Leaving function ServiceHelper.Stop
12/13/2007 10:03:42  7  INF                      Leaving function InitializeTask.StopServicesListedInRegistry
12/13/2007 10:03:42  7  ERR                      Task initialize has failed with an unknown exception
12/13/2007 10:03:42  7  ERR                      Exception: System.ServiceProcess.TimeoutException: Time out has expired and the operation has not been completed.
   at System.ServiceProcess.ServiceController.WaitForStatus(ServiceControllerStatus desiredStatus, TimeSpan timeout)
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.ServiceHelper.Stop(String serviceName)
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.InitializeTask.StopServicesListedInRegistry(RegistryHelper registry)
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.InitializeTask.StopAllServices()
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.InitializeTask.PrepareForUpgrade()
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.InitializeTask.Run()
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.TaskThread.ExecuteTask()
12/13/2007 10:03:42  7  INF                      Entering function Common.BuildExceptionMessage
12/13/2007 10:03:42  7  INF                        Entering function StringResourceManager.GetResourceString
12/13/2007 10:03:42  7  INF                          Resource id to be retrieved is ExceptionInfo for language English (United States)
12/13/2007 10:03:42  7  INF                          Resource retrieved id ExceptionInfo is An exception of type {0} was thrown.  Additional exception information: {1}
12/13/2007 10:03:42  7  INF                        Leaving function StringResourceManager.GetResourceString
12/13/2007 10:03:42  7  INF                      Leaving function Common.BuildExceptionMessage
12/13/2007 10:03:42  7  INF                      Entering function Common.BuildExceptionInformation
12/13/2007 10:03:42  7  INF                        Entering function Common.BuildExceptionMessage
12/13/2007 10:03:42  7  INF                          Entering function StringResourceManager.GetResourceString
12/13/2007 10:03:42  7  INF                            Resource id to be retrieved is ExceptionInfo for language English (United States)
12/13/2007 10:03:42  7  INF                            Resource retrieved id ExceptionInfo is An exception of type {0} was thrown.  Additional exception information: {1}
12/13/2007 10:03:42  7  INF                          Leaving function StringResourceManager.GetResourceString
12/13/2007 10:03:42  7  INF                        Leaving function Common.BuildExceptionMessage
12/13/2007 10:03:42  7  INF                      Leaving function Common.BuildExceptionInformation
12/13/2007 10:03:42  7  ERR                      An exception of type System.ServiceProcess.TimeoutException was thrown.  Additional exception information: Time out has expired and the operation has not been completed.
System.ServiceProcess.TimeoutException: Time out has expired and the operation has not been completed.
   at System.ServiceProcess.ServiceController.WaitForStatus(ServiceControllerStatus desiredStatus, TimeSpan timeout)
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.ServiceHelper.Stop(String serviceName)
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.InitializeTask.StopServicesListedInRegistry(RegistryHelper registry)
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.InitializeTask.StopAllServices()
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.InitializeTask.PrepareForUpgrade()
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.InitializeTask.Run()
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.TaskThread.ExecuteTask()
12/13/2007 10:03:42  7  INF                      Entering function Common.BuildExceptionInformation
12/13/2007 10:03:42  7  INF                        Entering function Common.BuildExceptionMessage
12/13/2007 10:03:42  7  INF                          Entering function StringResourceManager.GetResourceString
12/13/2007 10:03:42  7  INF                            Resource id to be retrieved is ExceptionInfo for language English (United States)
12/13/2007 10:03:42  7  INF                            Resource retrieved id ExceptionInfo is An exception of type {0} was thrown.  Additional exception information: {1}
12/13/2007 10:03:42  7  INF                          Leaving function StringResourceManager.GetResourceString
12/13/2007 10:03:42  7  INF                        Leaving function Common.BuildExceptionMessage
12/13/2007 10:03:42  7  INF                      Leaving function Common.BuildExceptionInformation
12/13/2007 10:03:42  7  INF                      Entering function TaskBase.OnTaskStop
12/13/2007 10:03:42  7  INF                        Creating the OnTaskStop event for task initialize
12/13/2007 10:03:42  7  ERR                        Task initialize has failed
12/13/2007 10:03:42  7  INF                        friendlyMessage for task initialize is An exception of type System.ServiceProcess.TimeoutException was thrown.  Additional exception information: Time out has expired and the operation has not been completed.
12/13/2007 10:03:42  7  INF                        debugMessage for task initialize is An exception of type System.ServiceProcess.TimeoutException was thrown.  Additional exception information: Time out has expired and the operation has not been completed.
System.ServiceProcess.TimeoutException: Time out has expired and the operation has not been completed.
   at System.ServiceProcess.ServiceController.WaitForStatus(ServiceControllerStatus desiredStatus, TimeSpan timeout)
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.ServiceHelper.Stop(String serviceName)
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.InitializeTask.StopServicesListedInRegistry(RegistryHelper registry)
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.InitializeTask.StopAllServices()
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.InitializeTask.PrepareForUpgrade()
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.InitializeTask.Run()
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.TaskThread.ExecuteTask()

Yup, will not run again, just like WSS3 SP1...

Well, I better get to testing this mongrel.

This is not what I was expecting..

oh well...Debug mode:

• Is Server Gubbed:= Yes
• Google error in log: Solution found: http://sharepointxperience.blogspot.com/2007/03/kb932091-crashed-my-moss-2007.html
• Restart IIS
• Is Server Gubbed:= Yes
• Uninstall MOSS SP1

Oh, no I can't...

So you can't reinstall it, and you can't remove it!

Well its a repair for SharePoint then...

Bugger...

Note: This is why we have development servers!

UPDATE:

Check out this post for a solution that fixed my problems...

posted @ Thursday, December 13, 2007 10:58 AM | Feedback (1) | Filed Under [ Sharepoint Work ]

MOSS SP1 Install Notes

I thought I should create this blog as I am going along because I usually forget some critical item that gubs my server if I try it again

Jeff Holliday has posted on what has changes with a plethora of links to relevant content. make sure you read the pre-requisites for the SharePoint updates from the How to deploy 2007 Microsoft Office System Servers Service Pack 1 and Microsoft Office Server Language Pack 2007 Service Pack 1 page on the Microsoft support site.

Installing The 2007 Microsoft Office Servers Service Pack 1 (SP1)

• officeserver2007sp1-kb936984-x86-fullfile-en-us.exe

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=ad59175c-ad6a-4027-8c2f-db25322f791b&DisplayLang=en

You will need to install Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Service Pack 1 (SP1) first....

posted @ Thursday, December 13, 2007 10:40 AM | Feedback (0) | Filed Under [ Sharepoint Work ]

Silverlight cream, kinda, but it is interesting!

Well, I was browsing the Microsoft downloads site looking for SP1 for SharePoint and a wee popup asked if I would like to see the http://download.microsoft.com beta...

You can view it at http://preview.microsoft.com/downloads/HomePage.aspx and see what you think. My Silverlight guru collogue Charlie Holland is currently pulling the site apart to see how it ticks...

Good luck

I have been finding it interesting the even recent additions to Microsoft's web content has been in Flash and I am glad to see some movement towards dogfooding Silverlight...

posted @ Thursday, December 13, 2007 8:50 AM | Feedback (0) | Filed Under [ Sharepoint Industry News ]

Information Sync

Over the past year of using the Windows Mobile Device Center on Vista as well as ActiveSync 4.5 I have become increasingly disillusioned with them both and searching for another tool that would do the job better.

Why Mobile Device Center is a bit pants!

I have found that it has become increasingly difficult to connect my mobile to this software and I have had to hard reset my phone a number of times to get it to work again. At the moment it just does not connect at all to my laptop at home, which is just as well as I would end up with a multitude of duplicate contacts ever time I sync between two mobile. And not just my contacts, at some points I have had my phone go off at midnight (when I am sleeping) with five or six birthday alerts for the same person!

ActiveSync has many of the same problems...

Interim Solutions

I even went through a phase of installing Exchange 2003 and Active Directory on my server just to use Exchange ActiveSync...Which is cool, and useful.. But not really worth the overhead of managing it at home.

I wanted to go further and have my contacts update their own information. So I started using LinkedIn as a contact repository, and using the LinkedIn Outlook toolbar I had a lot of success. I have used LinkedIn for this purpose for a couple of years now, but I am now finding that I have a multitude of these collaboration sites under my belt, and I really need a tool that sync's with all my online tools and my offline ones.

A better way

And so this leads me to Plaxo. This is by far and away the best tool I have come across. It's so good, I even paid the subscription fee to get the extra features like Mobile Sync, contact backup and others. And you know that is not like me :)

Plaxo has this marvelous tool called the "De-duper". Can you imagine what it does :). And I will tell you something, I went from 1250 ish contacts to 920 without even breaking a sweat...

There are many more Syncing options available, although some are only for paid up members...

And what does Plaxo do for me...

Contacts

Plaxo provides a single point of truth for all my contacts. I can have an email sent to any of my contacts to get them to update their details, and they do not even need to be members of Plaxo to do this :).

• Sync's my Contacts from Outlook at work
• Sync's my Contacts from Outlook at home
• Sync's my contacts from my phone
• Sync's my contacts from LinkedIn (One Way)
• Sync's my contacts from Google

I get a very nice little profile (http://martinhinshelwood.myplaxo.com) that I can control how and who can view my information.

Calendar

I have two calendars setup on Plaxo that overlay. One for my personal and one for my Office calendar items. Both calendars applier in both my Outlook's and as I am using 2007 I can overlay them if I want to.

• Sync's my Calendar from Outlook at work
• Sync's my Calendar from Outlook at home
• Sync's my Calendar from my phone
• Sync's my Calendar from Google (One Way) [hopefully not for long]

My calendars are published in two formats: one that has a friendly URL (http://martinhinshelwood.myplaxo.com/calendar) that is publicly available as a free \ busy publication and one that has a crazy URL that has my actual meeting subjects in them for private access.

All of my calendars are synced to my phone "over the air" in a consolidated view...

The future

There are a number of features I would like to see in Plaxo as, although they are in beta testing of version 3 of their website (the one I am using) there are a couple of niggly things that mildly irritate me. Though I am impressed with the number and functionality of the syncs that are available. Many more than I use...

• The ability to see the last time contacts details were updated by me, and by them (even if they are not members of Plaxo)...Maybe an option to request an update from all contacts that have not updated details in 1 year.
• No notification on my windows mobile for PlaxoSync when it fails to connect unless I manually initiated a Sync.
• The ability to choose when adding an event which calendar it goes into from my phone...Currently I am not sure what will happen...
• The ability to control the viability of individual fields of information on my profiles...mainly to control what is displayed on my http://martinhinshelwood.myplaxo.com page.
• Adding the ability to sync RSS feed lists with Outlook, IE, Google and others....

posted @ Thursday, December 13, 2007 12:08 AM | Feedback (0) | Filed Under [ Windows Mobile Personal Social Networks Industry News Work Ideas ]

The new ClusterMaps: NeoWORX

I came across this amazing new service which is very similar to ClusterMaps, NeoWORX. It is a bit of a pain in Flash as the system resources required for flash these days seams a little excessive, but I would like to see it running as a WPF XBAP.

In fact I would go as far as to say, that would be something my company would pay money for. You see we have generators in service and at depots all over the world. that is our Fleet if you will, and our board members would eat up this kind of thing. If we could pass it some geographical data and plot all of our generators and coolers around the world in real time it would be a fantastic data presentation tool for the board.

I think that the globe above , while cool, is a wee bit to gimmicky for that purpose, but the NeoEarth feature would better suit our needs...

All it needs is for NeoWORX to provide some sort of SDK with a local install of the engine for corporate customers to send their application any Geo tagged data :) With, hopefully, the ability to control what appears in the popup's :)

posted @ Monday, December 03, 2007 8:36 PM | Feedback (1) | Filed Under [ Personal Work ]

Mozy update

Well, due to my campaign to get lots of free bandwidth I now have an additional 2.3 GB on top of my initial free 2GB bringing the grand total to 4.3 GB of online storage with Mozy!

This is fantastic as I have more than enough room for all of my files. But, in the interest of keeping my consumption low, I have remove certain files from the backup:

• All my music: mainly because I can get it again :)
• All my source code: its stored on CodePlex anyway.
• Emails: I use Google Mail and have masses of space from them anyway.

This means that I have plenty of free space (I am only at 66% ish usage) for all those word docs and presentations.

Now I have a couple of family members signed up I can see that Mozy really is easy to use as with only a few minutes reading all my relatives were able to actually understand what they were getting and why...

Again I would like to thank a few guys for their mega byte support:

Andrew Stifora, Garrett Hoofman, Peter Benschop, chan pen, Jeroen te Strake, Thomas Williams, Jim Calder, Stuart McVicar, John Hinshelwood

posted @ Sunday, December 02, 2007 5:34 PM | Feedback (1) | Filed Under [ Personal ]