MCPBlog

TSWA 2008 error - Attempted to read or write protected memory
Body:
If you experience following error accesing TFS web access, don't worry there is a solution.
 
"Attempted to read or write protected memory. This is often an indication that other memory is corrupt.
Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.
Exception Details: System.AccessViolationException: Attempted to read or write protected memory. This is often an indication that other memory is corrupt.
Source Error:
An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below."
 
Go to TFS cache folder "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Team System Web Access\Cache" and add NETWORK Account Change Permission.
 
Note!!!
If this doesn't work, go to web.config of TFSWA and modify location of cache to new location.
 
<configuration>
…
<appSettings>
<add key="WorkItemTrackingCacheRoot" value="C:\newlocation" />
....
</appSettings>
…
</configuration>
 
And reconfigure NTFS permissions for NETWORK account.
 

 
Published: 10.4.2010 15:32
Posted: Apr 10 2010, 03:38 PM by MCPblog: Posts
3....2....1 go to 2010
Body:
MCPblog is being migrated to Sharepoint 2010. New site is currently available at http://2010.mcpblog.net. I'll try not to brake any links.
 
Wish me luck.
Published: 28.3.2010 0:22
Posted: Mar 28 2010, 12:25 AM by MCPblog: Posts
TFS 2008 convert Workgroup license to Standard
Body:

If you have installed Team Foundation Server 2008 Workgroup edition than you may or may not know that you are eligible to only 5 licensed users. To unlock full potential of TFS for > 6 users you need to convert your product to Standard Edition.

Of course you need to have Standar Edition license, or if you have MSDN subscription, you can get it from there. Technet user, don't bother to look on technet since TFS is not available via technet. Microsoft Partners (Regular or Gold) will have to browse their DVD's or MSDN.

If you have key keep reading.

Go to add/remove programs, find TFS and select Change/Remove button:

Maintenance mode Options page will appear and you'll find that PID field is been prepopulated with some key. Don't be happy, because this is workgroup edition key!!! Silly, isn't it.

Problem is that setup.sdb file is been prepopulated with this key, and you need to delete PID section from this file. File can be found at:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation Server\Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation Server - ENU\Setup.stb

Open it with Notepad, find and delete section Product key (both rows), and save changes.

Restart maintenance mode via "change/remove" and the fields are enabled. Type new product key, and press Next.

To verify version of TFS open registry (regedit.exe) and browse to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SOFTWARE > Microsoft > VisualStudio > 9.0 > TeamFoundation > Registration

You'll find a value named, "Edition_CT", Here's the table of available values to determine which edition you have:

  • "Full" = Team Foundation Server ("Standard Edition")
  • "Trial" = Team Foundation Server 180-day Trial Edition
  • "Workgroup" = Team Foundation Server Workgroup Edition
Category: ASP.net
Published: 18.12.2009 13:02
Posted: Dec 18 2009, 01:02 PM by MCPblog: Posts
Filed under:
“Contains” is missing from SharePoint Advanced Search
Body:

Last night I was setting up SharePoint Advanced Search Box in Enterprise Search and I was puzzled for a couple of seconds. For all text fields that I had in metadata mappings, I had no option "Contains" and "Does not contain"!!!

But I had couple of technical documentation for "old" implementation, and had no single word about this needed to be set explicitly. "New" implementation of Search has also been slightly modified but I had no clue what happened. So I decided to investigate and luckily I've found problem/solution.

If you don't have Microsoft Office Servers Infrastructure Update in your SharePoint farm than you have this problem (Or if you have SP2).

Don't panic!!!

Simply add following piece <Option Name="AllowOpContains" Value="True"/> underneath root node.

  • Go to Advanced Search page and click Site Actions, and Edit Page.
  • On the Advanced Search Web Part, click Edit in upper right corner of web part, and then click Modify Shared Web Part.
  • In the Properties text box, click the small rectangle Builder.

  • In the Builder dialog box, under the root node create <Option Name="AllowOpContains" Value="True"/> and click OK.

Why has this been removed from SharePoint?

This option has been removed from the Advanced Search page, because setting this restriction can issue a very extensive SQL query, such as "CONTRACT". This causes a huge load on SQL server and such queries often timeout!!!

So take care with this option.

Category: Sharepoint
Published: 7.12.2009 22:29
Posted: Dec 07 2009, 10:29 PM by MCPblog: Posts
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Installing Team Foundation Server 2008 on Windows 2008 and SQL 2008
Body:

Today I have decided to deploy Team Foundation Server 2008 into my production environment, and imagine what? Yeeeees I run into a lot of problems. But presumably as I'm writing this post I've managed to solve them.

So, if you want to do straightforward installations of TFS follow these steps:

Environment

  • Account <domain>\tfsadmin in as regular user
  • Platform: Windows Server 2008 with SP2 x86
    • .NET 3.5 installed
    • IIS installed
    • Add <domain>\tfsadmin into local admins
  • SQL 2008 Standard (without SP1 !!!!)
    • Services are running under <domain>\tfsadmin
  • Log in as different user with local admin privileges

TFS SP1 slipstreaming

Than simply run setup from TFSwithSP1. From there you'll find that installation is pretty much simple. Keep in mind that you have to use TFSADMIN account during installation. Happy Teaming.

Category: ASP.net
Published: 30.11.2009 20:01
Posted: Nov 30 2009, 08:01 PM by MCPblog: Posts
Filed under:
Activate Site Directory in Sharepoint Server 2010
Body:

If you are playing with enterprise features of Sharepoint 2010 you have probably noticed that Site Directory template is missing. Site directory has been intentionally hidden because of compatibility issues with upgrade process between 2007 and 2010.

If you want to "enable it" simply follow these steps.

  • Browse to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\1033\XML
  • Open webtempsps.xml
  • Find section for Site Directory and change Hidden value
    <Template Name="SPSSITES" ID="34">
    <Configuration ID="0" Title="Site Directory" Type="0" Hidden="FALSE" ImageUrl="/_layouts/1033/images/template_site_dir.png" Description="A site for listing and categorizing important sites in your organization. It includes different views for categorized sites, top sites, and a site map." DisplayCategory="Enterprise" VisibilityFeatureDependency="5F3B0127-2F1D-4cfd-8DD2-85AD1FB00BFC">
  • After that open command prompt and browse to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\BIN
  • Run following command:
    stsadm.exe -o activatefeature -id 5F3B0127-2F1D-4cfd-8DD2-85AD1FB00BFC –url http://yoursite

After that go to your site URL and create new site and you'll see "Site Directory"

 

Category: Sharepoint
Published: 24.11.2009 12:08
Posted: Nov 24 2009, 12:08 PM by MCPblog: Posts
Filed under:
“allowInsecureTransport” error during installation Sharepoint 2010 Beta
Body:

If you run into problem during running of Sharepoint 2010 Configuration wizard that reports error:

Failed to create sample data.
An exception of type Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.UserProfileException was thrown. Additional exception information: Unrecognized attribute 'allowInsecureTransport'. Note that attribute names are case-sensitive. (C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\WebClients\Profile\client.config line 56)

Simply do the following:

  • Uninstall Sharepoint 2010 and anything you installed regarding Sharepoint after (Sharepoint will remove SQL 2008 Express, not full SQL).
    • In case you used full SQL check for any additional bases
  • Run the install again, but STOP at the Configuration Wizard step!!!
  • On Windows Server 2008 right click Notepad and run it as Administrator,
  • Navigate notepad to "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\WebClients\Profile\",
  • Choose All files as file type,
  • Open file "client.config",
  • Delete two instances of "allowInsecureTransport" tag (mind the spaces and containing tag).
  • Proceed with Configuration Wizard.

I'm not sure what thing does but Wizard manages to complete successfully :)

Category: Sharepoint
Published: 17.11.2009 13:13
Posted: Nov 17 2009, 01:13 PM by MCPblog: Posts
Filed under:
Active Directory Lightweight Services (ADAM) and ADSIEDIT ports
Body:

As you may know or may not know Exchange's EDGE role requires operating server that is not member of active directory. So how EDGE server knows info about recipient, configuration, and schema? One of the requirements before installing EDGE role is to install ADAM (on Windows Server 2003) or Active Directory LightWeight Directory Service Role (on Windows Server 2008). Btw, ADAM is short for Active Directory Application Mode and its kind a special mode of Active Directory service designed to store information for directory-based applications. Yes, the one that can read and speak LDAP.

After you're done with installation you have ADSIEDIT utility to examine data stored in partitions of this special AD. With regular AD you have data in "NTDS.DIT", here data is stored in "<EXCHANGE LOCATION>\TransportRoles\data\Adam\ADAMNTDS.DIT".

Open ADSIEDIT (from administrative tools or from MMC) and as a port number type 50389. You can choose between following partitions:

  • Configuration
  • Domain
  • Schema
Category: Exchange
Published: 28.10.2009 14:29
Posted: Oct 28 2009, 02:29 PM by MCPblog: Posts
Filed under:
PageTest your Internet facing SharePoint site
Body:

Page testing utilities are more and more popular. There even companies specialized in Site optimization. If you want to know how Microsoft managed to speed up their http://sharepoint.microsoft.com visit http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/09/28/how-we-did-it-speeding-up-sharepoint-microsoft-com.aspx

Couples of web sites where you can test yours site performance:

Test results for www.mcpblog.net :)

Category: Sharepoint
Published: 23.10.2009 9:35
Posted: Oct 23 2009, 09:35 AM by MCPblog: Posts
Filed under:
BDC step by step
Body:

You've probably heard about BDC feature in MOSS 2007 Enterprise Edition, but you have never tried it in practice. There is good walkthrough that describes everything you need to setup the BDC example.

http://dotnetdreamer.com/2008/09/26/business-data-catalog-in-moss-2007/

I have only couple things to add:

  • If you don't manage to connect to BDC data in site collection, but you are able to connect to data via BDC template page, go to Permissions in BDC application and click "Copy Permissions to descendants"
  • If you have configured Sharepoint via NTLM instead Kerberos, you need to modify Application Definition File in section

    <Property Name="AuthenticationMode" Type="Microsoft.Office.Server.ApplicationRegistry.SystemSpecific.Db.DbAuthenticationMode">
    PassThrough
    </Property>

    Instead of "PassThrough" you should use "RevertToSelf"
Category: Sharepoint
Published: 29.5.2009 22:18
Posted: May 29 2009, 10:18 PM by MCPblog: Posts
Filed under:
Do you have MOSS SP2? Then type your PID key again
Body:

If you have deployed SP2 to your SharePoint Farm then you should definitely read this. There is known bug that converts your farm into Trial Environment for 180 days.

Luckily, there is easy solution, in a sense that you need to retype Product ID in Central Administration:

What happened?

http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/05/21/attention-important-information-on-service-pack-2.aspx

How to solve it?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/971620

Category: Sharepoint
Published: 25.5.2009 18:21
Posted: May 25 2009, 06:21 PM by MCPblog: Posts
Filed under:
Install & upgrade localized SharePoint farm to SP2 - part 2
Body:

This article is sequel to Install & upgrade localized SharePoint farm to SP2 - part 1 article in which we prepared installation resources to most recent SP.

Application role

After you have prepared slipstreamed contents, we can proceed with installation. On application server start MOSS-2007-x64-with-SP2 installation and when it comes to configuration wizard choose:

  • New farm,
  • Connect it to SQL server with proper account or simply use domain admin account (not recommended),
  • Wait for configuration to end,
  • Start installation from folder WSS-30-x64-LP-with-SP2 and run configuration wizard after installation finishes,
  • Start installation from folder MOSS-2007-x64-with-SP2 and run configuration wizard after installation finishes.

This concludes installation steps necessary for application role server and brings us to configuration. You need to start services and configure SharedService provider on this server before adding any new server to farm. So from central administration start following:

  • Document Conversions Load Balancer Service,
  • Document Conversions Launcher Service,
  • Windows SharePoint Services Search,
  • Office SharePoint Server Search,
  • Excel Calculation Services.

And after that in Shared Services Administration create new SSP. General recommendation is to create two web applications inside SSP one for SSP site and other for Mysite.

Web Front-End role

On front end server start MOSS-2007-x64-with-SP2 installation and when it comes to configuration wizard choose

  • Yes, I want to connect to an existing server farm,
  • Specify SQL server name and click Retrieve Database Names,
  • Provide same account you used while configuring Application role,
  • Wait for configuration to end,
  • Start installation from folder WSS-30-x64-LP-with-SP2 and run configuration wizard after installation finishes,
  • Start installation from folder MOSS-2007-x64-with-SP2 and run configuration wizard after installation finishes.

That's all. Go to Central administration and verify Servers in farm with their version.

Category: Sharepoint
Published: 16.5.2009 9:21
Posted: May 16 2009, 09:21 AM by MCPblog: Posts
Filed under:
Install and upgrade localized SharePoint farm to SP2 - part 1
Body:

Yesterday, I went in a SharePoint rampage in a Lab environment with localized SP2 environment. After couple of hours I've managed to install the all required SP2's on two servers.

Scenario

  • One DC and two member servers, all of them Windows 2008 x64
  • One member server has SQL 2008 x64, and he is now MOSS 2007 Application role server
  • Other member server will be MOSS 2007 Web Front-End role server

Preparation

  • Download MOSS 2007 x64 with SP1 (currently there is no Slipstreamed SP2)
  • Download SP2 for MOSS 2007 x64
  • Download SP2 for WSS 3.0 x64 EN
  • Download localized WSS 3.0 x64 language pack
  • Download SP2 for localized WSS 3.0 x64
  • Download localized Office Server 2007 language pack
  • Download SP2 for localized Office Server 2007

Nice isn't it

Slipstreaming

  • Create three folders
    • 1. Folder - MOSS-2007-x64-with-SP2
    • 2. Folder - WSS-30-x64-LP-with-SP2
    • 3. Folder - MOSS-2007-x64-with-SP2
  • Copy installation files from MOSS 2007 x64 with SP1 to first folder, and delete all SP1 files in Update folder
  • Extract SP2 for MOSS 2007 x64 files to the same Update folder using extract command (SP2_filename /extract:<path>)
  • Extract localized WSS 3.0 x64 language pack to second folder,
  • Extract SP2 for localized WSS 3.0 x64 to Update folder in the same folder,
  • Extract localized Office Server 2007 language pack to third folder,
  • Extract SP2 for localized Office Server 2007 to Update folder in the same folder,
  • And of course, don't forget SP2 for WSS 3.0 x64 EN

Next article will address MOSS installation and upgrade procedure for two servers.

Category: Sharepoint
Published: 10.5.2009 22:45
Posted: May 10 2009, 10:45 PM by MCPblog: Posts
Filed under:
How to archive your Business Email on Sharepoint
Body:

Recently I've been asked to provide answer is there a solution that is able to store specific email messages or email conversations to Sharepoint. I've started some digging around and found that there is Out of the Box ability of Sharepoint and Outlook 2007 that provides solution.

Probably, you know about Sharepoint lists ability to connect them to Outlook.

  • When you open almost any type of library, click Actions and then Connect to Outlook

After that you will be able to have online/offline content in your Outlook. If you connect Sharepoint Calendar or Contacts to Outlook 2007 you WILL BE ABLE to add Calendar and Contact in Outlook and they will be synched to Sharepoint.

But, what about emails? There is specific type of library called Discussion List that is being able to provide same ability to email as Calendar and Contacts to their Item types. Process is pretty straight forward.

  • On Sharepoint create new Discussion list called "Business correspondences"
  • Connect it to Outlook (Action > Connect to Outlook)
  • In Outlook drag and drop specific emails into Sharepoint library, or create rule for important contacts that copies/moves messages to Sharepoint list

Email fields like Sender, Subject and attachment will be automatically parsed and you will be able to track them in Sharepoint. One of good things is ability of discussion list that it can recognize replies to subject and store them hierarchically with removing the prefix "RE: ". This gives you the option to create specific views against list, that groups items by unique subject.

Category: Sharepoint
Published: 2.5.2009 9:42
Posted: May 02 2009, 09:42 AM by MCPblog: Posts
Filed under:
SharePoint Best Practices Conference
Body:

For the first time in Europe, we had an opportunity to enjoy the gathering of SharePoint MVP's from around the world. Event called SharePoint Best Practices Conference took place in London, and it was a great place to be, especially if you are SharePoint guy. Lectures have been split into 4 tracks:

  • IT Pro
  • DEV/DES
  • Information Workers
  • Business Adoption

All together more than 60 lectures had been held. Brief overview of agenda can be seen on http://www.sharepointbestpractices.co.uk/Agenda.html. Overall impression of event is excellent, especially due the fact that we had chance to see facts and BP from field.

Category: Sharepoint
Published: 8.4.2009 12:43
Posted: Apr 08 2009, 12:43 PM by MCPblog: Posts
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