Tag Archives: Administration
The Ultimate SharePoint 2007 Virtual Machine (VHD)
I maintain a local virtual machine on my laptop to evaluate, explore, code, and learn. It’s one of my best tools and I find it incredibly useful each day. It also needs refreshing and upkeep like any other technology. Patches, new features, and experience compel me to make adjustments as time goes forward.
I’ve completed my latest build and wanted to lay out the specifications here in case it’s helpful to other people building a similar virtual machine for their own work. Admins, developers, and even business analysts can benefit from having a local fully autonomous and fully featured SharePoint server.
VHD Format
Ready for immediate use on any VM system
WinRAR split across 20 files (700 MB) for a total 13.2 GB download with a built in EXE extractor. No need to have WinRAR for extraction.
Note – No integration services are pre-loaded. If you’re using Microsoft Virtual PC, VMWare, or Hyper-V these come with an option to load integration for a smoother experience working inside of the running guest VM (moues pointer, disk drives, keyboard shortcuts, etc.)
Applications Installed
Adobe Reader 9.1.0
Adobe Flash for IE
IE 8.0
IE Developer Toolbar
Notepad 2.0
Performance Point Server 2007 – Planning and Monitoring Servers
Office 2007 Professional
Office Save as PDF Add-In
Office Groove 2007
Outlook 2007 with email profile configured (workflow / alert demos)
SharePoint Designer 2007
Visio 2007
Project Professional 2007
iFilter pack for Office 2007 formats
Visual Studio 2008 Team Suite Edition (incl Architecture, Database, Development, and Test)
Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO)
Visual Studio Add-In for MS Chart 3.5
Visual Studio Add-In for WSS Extensions v1.3
SDK – WSS CHM Documentation
SDK – MOSS CHM Documentation
Exam Diff Pro with right click integration and plugins for comparing PDF, XLS, DOC, etc.
SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition – with Database, Analysis, Reporting, and Integration
SQL Server Reporting Servers – BOTH native and integrated instances
SQL Server Management Studio – Full
SQL Profiler
SQL Sample Databases – Adventure Works, Northwind, Pubs
SQLCMD
SharePoint Server 2007 Enterprise Edition
Windows SharePoint Services patched to August 09 Cumulative Update (12.0.6514)
STSADMWin – GUI for STSADM command line to avoid typos and speed up routine tasks
Filezilla – Free FTP client
MagicDisc – Can host ISO files as drive letters
ZoomIt – Great for presentations! Zooms to one part of the screen for easy back-of-the-room reading
TreeSize Professional – Show disk consumption by folder branch
IIS 6.0 Resource Kit
IIS 6.0 Diagnostic Kit
SharePoint Manager 2007
Stramit CAML Viewer 2007
Enterprise Library 3.1
SpsDev.com ULS Log Reader
SharePoint Skinner
O/S Installed
Windows Server 2003 SP2 Enterprise Edition x86
Single C: partition expandable up to 30GB with 10GB free space
Defragged already
Active Directory
POP3 and SMTP email for local "training.corp" domain
"administrator@training.corp" is the default email address for TRAININGADMINISTRATOR
Netmon 3.3
Visual Round Trip Analyzer
Windows 2003 Server Resource Kit
CmdHere right click menu integration
Windows Automatic Updates are Disabled to avoid surprises and let you manage manually
Fun SP Admin Webcast Today @ http://stickam.com/toddklindt
I never participated in one of these before but had a great time today! 
My best practices were confirmed and reinforced. Administration tasks like:
- Start with a big C: partition
- Make a data partition, D: works well
- Move IIS logs to D:
- Move 12 logs to D:
- Confirm ample disk space before major upgrades or maintenance
- Don’t forget to look at SQL transaction logs. Need room here too!
- Use the community tools to make life easier. SP Admin Toolkit 4.0, SPDiag, etc.
Also, it was just plain fun to see all the other SharePoint people like @ToddKlindt, @bishopd, @catpaint1, @sharepointsara, and @lorigowin. Plus we had fun with wearing hats on webcams and even playing guitar. I can’t wait for next Monday!
Tune in every Monday @ http://toddklindt.com/netcast/
How to: Replace Notepad.exe with Notepad2.exe
We all love notepad. 
It’s a familiar useful tool you can rely on every Windows machine to have. However, it really hasn’t kept pace with the rapid change on the web. XML, JavaScript, JQuery, and even our old friend HTML just are too hard to read. Maybe I’m behind the times but I’ve finally upgraded all my machines to have a newer version of our old trusty friend.
Notepad 2 – Create Web pages and text documents with this color-coded no frills editor. |
To make it really helpful you’ll want to replace “C:WindowsSystem32Notepad.exe” but Windows NTFS security doesn’t make that too easy. Here are the steps to take ownership and replace the EXE. Be sure to include the last step for the INI configuration file too.
- Download Notepad 2!
- Browse to “C:WindowsSystem32”
- Right click on “Notepad.exe” and open Properties, then Security tab
- Click the “Advanced” button, then Owner tab
- Click “Edit” button to take ownership of this file
- Click OK
- Locate “Administrators” local group (or the effective line for the logged in user)
- Grant Full Control
- Click OK
- Rename “Notepad.exe” to “Notepad1.exe” to keep a backup nearby
- Copy “Notepad2.exe” to “C:WindowsSystem32Notepad.exe”
- Copy “Notepad2.ini” to “C:WindowsSystem32Notepad2.ini”
(NOTE: renamed to preserve file associations and Edit context menu shortcuts)
Why MSCONFIG is super cool
The Microsoft System Configuration Utility (MSCONFIG.EXE) is very easy to access and incredibly handy. The biggest benefit comes from removing excess startup items. Often times our machines boot all sorts of programs we’re not aware of leading to sluggish start ups and lower performance overall.
As the Windows O/S adds more and more features the MSCONFIG.EXE tools is updated to make them easier to access. Especially for admins and developers that work on many systems. Disabling UAC (User Account Control) for example is directly available from MSCONFIG.EXE and faster than clicking all over Control Panel. I find myself using many of the same old tools to troubleshoot and not giving enough attention to newer options like Security Center, System Restore, and Remote Assistance.
Give it a whirl. You might find yourself doing “Start Run MSCONFIG” more than all the others one at a time.
http://www.optimizingpc.com/optimize/msconfig.html
PowerShell Out-Grid.ps1
NOTE – PowerShell 2.0 now includes the “Out-GridView” cmdlet which removes the need for this custom .PS1 script built for PowerShell 1.0
The current release of PowerShell V1.0 does not ship with any GUI tools. V2.0 CTP3 comes with a scripting IDE and the Out-GridView cmdlet to help with adoption and ease of use.I personally find the Out-Grid.ps1 script very handy and copy to servers whenever I want to do heavy PowerShell work. Check it out below.
If you see an error stating that “the execution of scripts is disabled on this system” then you’ll want to run “set-executionpolicy unrestricted”
FREE AntiVirus for Windows Server 2008
Today I learned of two FREE programs that could help cover my laptop. In the virus and malware marketplace I’ve long believe more than one tool (and vendor) is needed to stay safe. There are just too many angles of attack with new one coming up all the time. Staying current on patches is a great idea. It’s a good foundation, but you also need active scanning tools.
Here are two programs to consider. I run ClamWin and have been very happy with it. Then just add Windows Defender for malware and Windows Update for patches to keep your machine safe. Learn more about safe computing practices at http://www.onguardonline.gov/
Download Now
FIX for EventLog Application 2001: It has taken too long to refresh the W3SVC counters
Please see the below hyperlink and the run the commands included in line. I see this one often with SharePoint and wanted to share the research in case your event logs show something similar. Less noise makes it easier to troubleshoot real issues.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;267831
EventLog Application Error 2001: It has taken too long to refresh the W3SVC counters, the stale counters are being used instead.
Open CMD and run:
unlodctr msftpsvc unlodctr asp unlodctr inetinfo lodctr w3ctrs.ini lodctr ftpctrs.ini lodctr axperf.ini lodctr infoctrs.ini
Application Error 8/1/2009 2:08 W3CTRS 2001 It has taken too long to refresh the W3SVC counters, the stale counters are being used instead.
Workaround for “Package does not support server operating systems” with Orca MSI editor
I recently tried to add the Windows Media Player 11 FireFox plugin (wmpfirefoxplugin.exe) to my Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition machine and was disappointed to see the below dialog warning me of the fact it wouldn’t install on a server operating system.
Not one to cede easily I opened Sysinternal’s PROCEXP.EXE, found the MSI handle, made a copy, and used Microsoft Orca to edit he MSI and remove the requirement. The package installed and works great.
If you use Windows Server 2008 as your workstation you might want to consider these same steps for any installation that fails around O/S verification. The warning, of course, is that the software might truly not work as expected. However, most of the times it seems to run just fine for me.
SharePoint 2010 Sneak Peek !!!
Today Microsoft released some great videos highlighting the potential of the next release of SharePoint. There is some excellent material here include a full walk through showing live products in action.
http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/2010/Sneak_Peek/
|
Overview
- Tom Rizzo, speaker
- Robust cross browser support
- AJAX calls for faster page loads
- SharePoint Designer 2010 – Streamline interface, robust BDC features. No more Lightning Tool BDC Metaman?
- SharePoint Workspace 2010 – Take lists and documents offline with a better than ever Groove client
- BCS is the new BDC
- Rich integration with Office 2010 – Sample BCS populated memo to regional sales representative.
IT Pro
- Richard Riley, speaker
- Professional productivity, Scalable platform, Flexible deployment
- Release timeline
- Central Admin cleaned interface. Similar to Control Panel in XP from Windows 2000.
- Robust Logging. New dedicated database, runs BPA (Best Practice Analyzer) to give suggestions, granular detail never seen before. “Slowest Pages” insight.
- Visual Upgrade. Allows site owners and users to preview before decided to switch browser interfaces.
Developer
- Developer productivity, Platform services, Flexible deployment
- Developer dashboard. Site feature provides browser output with detail rendering stack.
- Visual Studio 2010 – MUCH improved developer experience. Detailed build options and project types.
- Visual web part designer.
- LINQ for SharePoint API
- Client Object Model (OM) available in Silverlight and JavaScript.
- Write quality solutions in less time.
Event Error 5553 – failure trying to synch site”??” for ContentDB “??” WebApp “??”. Exception message was Cannot insert duplicate key row in object ‘dbo.UserMemberships’ with unique index
I ran into this problem this week after doing several site collection moves. The resolution is simple, effective, and only take a few minutes.
ststam -o preparetomove –contentdb [SQLServer:DatabaseName] –site http://sharepoint stsadm -o deletecontentdb –url http://sharepoint –databasename [database] –databaseserver [SQLSever] stsadm -o addcontentdb –url http://sharepoint –databasename [database] –databaseserver [SQLSever]
