vSphere Client on Windows 7

While installing vSphere client 4.0 on a Windows 7, I encountered the error, “The Microsoft Visual J# 2.0 Second Edition installer returned error code ‘4113’ "" “.

As indicated by the error message, the error can be resolved by uninstalling, “Microsoft Visual J# 2.0 Redistributable Package” from “Programs” in “Control Panel”

SharePoint 2010 Beta – Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.PublishingWeb.ExcludeFromNavigation method

While upgrading to SharePoint 2010 Beta, the following error was thrown while trying to access upgraded pages:
Method not found: 'Void Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.PublishingWeb.ExcludeFromNavigation(Boolean, System.Guid)'.
Looks like this method was excluded from Beta (not sure if there is a replacement method for this one). I will update this post if I find a workaround.
In MOSS 2007

In SharePoint 2010 Beta

SharePoint 2010 Beta Features

I have been waiting for so long to write this post and here I am…..So let’s get started and see what new features are available in SharePoint 2010 Beta.
Overall the basic idea of SharePoint(in general) is Content Management, Portal and Search integrated on a single platform. Few of the benefits of SharePoint are: Tight Office + SharePoint integration, Rich applications, Consistent User Experience, Navigation and architecture.
The main features of SharePoint 2010 are (this should be familiar to MOSS 2007 developers – like 6 pillars of MOSS 2007 ) :
Composites

• Sandboxed Solutions
• InfoPath Form Services
• Enhanced Workflows

Sites

• Single Infrastructure for Intranets, Extranets and Internet Sites.
• Enhanced UI with Ribbon, Dialogs, Edit in Place and Ajax (Less page refreshes).
• Office Client and Web App support (basic editing, high fidelity rendering)
• SharePoint Workspace and Mobile (groove enhancements)
• Support for XHTML, Multilingual

Communities

• Collaborate using Wikis, Blogs and Co-Authoring
• Organize using Tags, Ratings and Bookmarks
• MySites Smart Profiles and Feeds
• Browse Colleagues, Experts and Org

Content Management

• Taxonomy, Workflow, Document Sets
• Digital Asset Management
• Handle Larger lists, Document Libraries
• Content Types and Taxonomy across all the farms
• Policy and Records Management

SharePoint Search

• Standard and FAST Search
• Experience, Relevance and Navigation
• People Search
• Scale and Flexible Platform
• Search Results preview

Insights

• Excel Services, SQL Server Support
• PerformancePoint Services
• Visio Services and Chart Web Part
• Business Connectivity Services
• PowerPivot (previously called Gemini)…100 M rows in excel and publish it to SharePoint – Two forms (SQL Server Power Pivot for Excel and SQL Server Power Pivot for SharePoint)

Coming to the End User, Social Networking and BI Enhancements, we have

• Ribbon changes depending on context (different for a page and a library)
• Edit in Place (with live preview)
• Add Pictures directly without loading them into a library
• Less page refreshes and more fluid
• Checkout multiple documents
• Document Sets – > Handles multiple documents as a single entity (flexible in handling sets)
• Social Computing – > Activity Feed, Tag Cloud, Recent Blog feeds, Ratings,
• All desktop applications open in Web now…
• Find the right expertise people in your organization using People search and other social networking features
• Subscribe to excel updates (rest based feeds) and directly link to live data.

Infrastructure Changes

• On-Premises and/or Cloud
• Web user interface revamp
• Power Shell scripts (500+ cmdlets)
• Resource Governors, Health Monitoring using Rules, Analytics, Logging
• Upgrade is easier
• Manage Farm remotely using Windows 7
• Power shell – What if command is powerful
• Central Admin – Web Apps, Service apps, Content DB, Health Monitor
• OOB lot of rules for health monitoring (security, performance, configuration)
• WSS 4.0 – > Microsoft SharePoint Foundation
• Again Ribbon changes depending on the context here
• 64 Bit only
• Run upgrade checker from SP2 before doing the upgrade

I will be posting more about MOSS 2010, as I keep finding out more interesting features about it…..

SharePoint 2010 Beta Installation Instructions

Hardware prerequisites

Component	Minimum requirement
Processor	64-bit, dual processor, 3 GHz
RAM	4 GB for stand-alone or evaluation installation 8 GB for single server and multiple server farm installation for production use
Hard disk	80 GB
Other	DVD drive

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262485(office.14).aspx
Below are the Server Requirements

• Database: 64-bit edition of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 with Service Pack 1 (SP1)
• Web Front End & Application Server features: (The below step is also done by the MOSS 2010 Configuration Tool….Please feel free to jump to the next one)
  • Web Server (IIS) role
  • Application Server role

Software prerequisites for SQL Server 2008
· Microsoft SQL Server 2008 SP1

Installation Guide
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee667264(office.14).aspx
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc303420(office.14).aspx
I have few screenshots of the installation procedure here….










Please enter your product key on the next screen and click next.












Error: SQL Server at “servername” has an unsupported version 9.0.1399.6. The minimum required SQL server versions are SQL Server 2005 SP3 CU3, version number: 9.0.4220.00 or SQL Server 2008 SP1 CU 2, version number 10.00.2714.00

I did not have SQL Server 2008 SP1 installed (though it was mentioned in the Prerequisites) and after installing SP1, I was able to continue the installation.








Follow the wizard which opens up after the Central Admin is opened for the first time.






Make sure the above site is added to trusted sites (otherwise you will not be able to perform most of the operations in central admin.


While configuring the services, the below errors occurred:

The service application proxy "User Profile Service Application" could not be provisioned because of the following error: 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) Corelation Id: 3826b556-ee29-46b6-910f-b7179d58f030

To fix the above issue the WCF Hotfix (KB976462) for Windows Server 2008 R2 needs to be installed. The WCF Hotfix (KB976462) for Windows Server 2008 R2 is available from Microsoft Connect, and can be downloaded here: http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?DownloadID=23806
Download and install the above Hotfix. Once installed, restart the server after installation.

Manage Windows 2008 R2 servers using Windows 7

Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) for Windows® 7 enables IT administrators to manage roles and features that are installed on computers that are running Windows Server® 2008 R2, Windows Server® 2008, or Windows Server® 2003, from a remote computer that is running Windows 7.
Note: RSAT for Windows 7 can be installed ONLY on computers that are running the Enterprise, Professional, or Ultimate editions of Windows 7
RSAT includes the following tools and can be downloaded at the below location:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=7d2f6ad7-656b-4313-a005-4e344e43997d
Server Administration Tools

• Server Manager

Role Administration Tools

• Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS) Tools
• Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) Tools
• Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS) Tools
• DHCP Server Tools
• DNS Server Tools
• File Services Tools
• Hyper-V Tools
• Terminal Services Tools

Feature Administration Tools

• BitLocker Password Recovery Viewer
• Failover Clustering Tools
• Group Policy Management Tools
• Network Load Balancing Tools
• SMTP Server Tools
• Storage Explorer Tools
• Storage Manager for SANs Tools
• Windows System Resource Manager Tools

Download the tool and install it. Once installed navigate to control panel –>Programs and Features –> Turn Windows Features on or off. Select all or the required features in Remote Administration Tools section.

Change recovery model for all databases - sp_MSForEachDB

Very often I need to change the recovery model on development servers from Full -> Simple as there is no need to backup the transaction data(because it is dev server). To accomplish this, normally you would right click a database node in sql server management studio -> options -> change recovery mode. But since I like to use t-sql directly, I decided to dig through the documentation to find out if there is a better way to do this and there is a definitely one.
In SQL Server, there is an undocumented(which means, this may change anytime without notice) store procedured named sp_MSForEachDB in the master database and is used to execute a single t-sql statement. The syntax is something like this:

sp_MSforeachdb @command1, @replacechar, @command2, @command3, @precommand, @postcommand

and each parameter is defined below:

• @command1 is of type nvarchar and is the first command to be executed
• @replacechar is of type nchar and is the character in the first command which will be replaced by the Database name. By default it is '?'.
• @command2 is of type nvarchar and is an additional command which can run against each database
• @command3 is of type nvarchar and is same as @command2
• @precommand is of type nvarchar and is a command which runs before running any command on each database
• @postcommand is of type nvarchar and is a command which runs after all the commands are run on all databases

Except @command1, every other parameter is optional. Enough of theory, lets start using it. Below are few examples on how to use the stored procedure:
Print all the databasename names
exec sp_MSforeachdb 'PRINT ''[?]'''
Check orphans
exec sp_MSForEachDB '[?].DBO.SP_CHANGE_USERS_LOGIN ''REPORT'''
Change db owner to sa
exec sp_MSForEachDB 'USE [?]; EXEC SP_CHANGEDBOWNER ''SA'''
Print the physical names and attributes of files associated with the current database
exec sp_MSForEachDB 'USE [?]; EXEC SP_HELPFILE'
Run DBCC CheckDB on all the databases
exec sp_MSForEachDB "DBCC CHECKDB ('?')"
and finally to change the recovery model to simple for al l the databases, first run the below command and then copy the output and execute it
EXEC sp_MSForEachDB 'PRINT ''ALTER DATABASE [?] SET RECOVERY SIMPLE''; PRINT ''GO'''
Thats all for now and maybe next time, I will have the examples which use the additional parameters.

Office 2010 technical preview

I have been using Office 2010 technical preview for a few days now and its been good so far. I have been primarily using Word and Outlook. Microsoft has introduced quite a few new features with this version. I tried to summarize few of them here, but there might be many more features which I am not aware of.

Outlook:

• Conversations (similar to gmail threaded conversations)
• Quick Steps, which groups frequently used actions and also enables one to create a customized action
• Cleanup tool, which is used to remove any redundant messages in a thread
• Many different types of views have been introduced. Email can be grouped by Date, Conversation, To and many more...
• MailTips - To prevent common faux pas scenarios

Word:

• Integrated screen capture tool (similar to snip tool in vista)
• Better Photo editing capabilities

Outlook has been very stable, but the zoom tool does not function properly. Word cannot open/edit documents in SharePoint (this is really painful but heh, this is technical preview - so stop complaining). I guess that's all I have for today and will post later as I continue using this tool.

Windows 7, Configuring

Last month I took the Windows 7 Configuring beta exam (70-680). Well, the results are out and I did pass the exam.

Tip for anyone taking an exam : Always read carefully the "Skills measured" section on the official exam's site. The exam preparation will almost be done when you go through that stuff.

Here is link to the exam preparation site:

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/exam.aspx?ID=70-680&locale=en-us

Also, if you need more resources, check out the links below:

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/training/windows.aspx
http://www.techexams.net/forums/mcts-mcitp-windows-2008-general/42480-71-680-resources.html

Visual Studio 2010 and .NET FX 4 Beta out

Visual Studio 2010 and .NET FX 4 Beta has been released to MSDN subscribers...Check out the image below:



Time to pull up your sleeves and start testing it....

Error while importing a sitecollection in MOSS 2007

Recently got this error message while trying to import a site collection in MOSS 2007:

FatalError: Failed to read package file.

at Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.ImportDataFileManager.Uncompress(SPRequest request)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.SPImport.Run()
*** Inner exception:
Failure writing to target file
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Library.SPRequest.ExtractFilesFromCabinet(String bstrTempDirectory, String bstrCabFileLocation)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.ImportDataFileManager.<>c__DisplayClass2.<Uncompress>b__0()
at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSecurity.CodeToRunElevatedWrapper(Object state)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSecurity.<>c__DisplayClass4.<RunWithElevatedPrivileges>b__2()
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities.SecurityContext.RunAsProcess(CodeToRunElevated secureCode)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges(WaitCallback secureCode, Object param)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges(CodeToRunElevated secureCode)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.ImportDataFileManager.Uncompress(SPRequest request) 

Resolution: The error is because of insufficient space on c drive. Please clean up c drive run the import process again.

IE 8 NTLM Authentication on Windows 2008

If you are using host headers to resolve the websites, then you might have seen the following issue with NTLM authenticated sites on IE 8. When you access the websites on a machine other than the one where it is hosted, you will be able to get to the sites.
Once you RDP onto the server and try to connect to the website, it will prompt for your windows credentials and will get an access denied message. This problem occurs because Windows includes a loopback check security feature that helps prevent reflection attacks on your computer(Probably some kind of security change has been made in IE8 related to this feature). Therefore, authentication fails if the FQDN or the custom host header that you use does not match the local computer name.
Resolution: Disable the loopback check

• Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
• In Registry Editor, locate and then click the following registry key:
  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa
• Right-click Lsa, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
• Type DisableLoopbackCheck, and then press ENTER.
• Right-click DisableLoopbackCheck, and then click Modify.
• In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.
• Quit Registry Editor, and then restart your computer.

Loading this assembly would produce a different grant set from other instances

After installing .NET 3.5 sp1, all the MOSS web applications were working fine except for one. The following error was showing up:

Stack trace:
at System.RuntimeTypeHandle.CreateInstance(RuntimeType type, Boolean publicOnly, Boolean noCheck, Boolean& canBeCached, RuntimeMethodHandle& ctor, Boolean& bNeedSecurityCheck)
at System.RuntimeType.CreateInstanceSlow(Boolean publicOnly, Boolean fillCache)
at System.RuntimeType.CreateInstanceImpl(Boolean publicOnly, Boolean skipVisibilityChecks, Boolean fillCache)
at System.Activator.CreateInstance(Type type, Boolean nonPublic)
at System.RuntimeType.CreateInstanceImpl(BindingFlags bindingAttr, Binder binder, Object[] args, CultureInfo culture, Object[] activationAttributes) at System.Activator.CreateInstance(Type type, BindingFlags bindingAttr, Binder binder, Object[] args, CultureInfo culture)
at System.Web.Configuration.Common.ModulesEntry.Create()
at System.Web.Configuration.HttpModulesSection.CreateModules()
at System.Web.HttpApplication.InitInternal(HttpContext context, HttpApplicationState state, MethodInfo[] handlers)
at System.Web.HttpApplicationFactory.GetNormalApplicationInstance(HttpContext context) at System.Web.HttpApplicationFactory.GetApplicationInstance(HttpContext context)
at System.Web.HttpRuntime.ProcessRequestInternal(HttpWorkerRequest wr)

Fix:
Just restart the application pool account associated with the erroring application and you be all set.

MOSS search access denied error after .NET Framework 3.5 sp1 installation

Recently we rolled out .NET Framework 3.5 sp1 on our MOSS Servers. During testing, we found out that while crawling the Sharepoint website the following error occurred:

Access is denied. Verify that either the Default Content Access Account has access to this repository, or add a crawl rule to crawl this repository.

To fix the above issue, try the below steps:

• Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
• In Registry Editor, locate and then click the following registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa
• Right-click Lsa, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
• Type DisableLoopbackCheck, and then press ENTER.
• Right-click DisableLoopbackCheck, and then click Modify.
• In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.
• Quit Registry Editor, and then restart your computer.(Try to re-run the crawl after registry change without restart. Sometimes it may not be necessary to restart.)