How to rename a SharePoint Server machine name.

Renaming a MOSS server is tough job. If anything goes wrong along the way chances are that you need to reconfigure your whole MOSS environment.

Here are the steps to take, and the order in which to take them if you want to rename a server that has MOSS already installed and configured on it:

1.Change each alternate access mapping for your MOSS/WSS deployment in Central Administration:

-Open Central Administration, "Operations" Tab, "Alternate access mappings" link -Modify each mapping item to reflect your newly chosen server name

2.Use stsadm.exe to invoke the "renameserver" command option:

-Open a command prompt window

-cd "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN"

-stsadm -o renameserver -newservername -oldservername

3.Rename your Server via Change Name Operation in Windows Server 2003: Start Menu Control Panel System, "Computer Name" tab, "Change" button.

4.Input your new server name

5.Reboot the server NOW.

6.After reboot, open command prompt
-cd C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN -stsadm -o updatefarmcredentials -userlogin -password -iisreset /noforce

7.Check all application pool identities in IIS, update where the old machine name is still there.

8.If you already have a search index drop this, and rebuild it.

Your server is now renamed.

Limit SharePoint Designer to Certain Users

For this post, I am going to concentrate on using security permissions to limit access to SPD.

Below is a quick way to limit only certain users the ability to SPD.
-Out-of-the-box, users who have Full Control and Contribute security permissions can open SPD and make changes.
-Assuming you want only users with Full Control access to have access to SPD, the easiest way is to turn off access to the site from SPD for users under the Contribute permission level.
-Open the site
-Select Site Actions > Site Settings.
-Under the “Users and Permissions” group, click the “Advanced permissions” link.
-Select Settings > Permission Levels from the toolbar.
-Click on the Contribute link.
-Under Site Permissions, uncheck the “Use Remote Interfaces - Use SOAP, Web DAV, or SharePoint Designer interfaces to access the Web site.” option.
-Click OK

The issue with the above steps is now any user with Contribute access cannot use SPD. You may have some users who you still want access to SPD but do not want to give Full Control to. For that scenario, you could create a new permission level.

-Open the site
-Select Site Actions > Site Settings.
-Under the “Users and Permissions” group, click the “Advanced permissions” link.
-Select Settings > Permission Levels from the toolbar.
-Click on the Contribute link.
-Scroll to the bottom and click the “Copy Permission Level” button.
-For the Name, type in “Contribute (With SPD)” (without the quotes).
-For the Description, type in “Can view, add, update, and delete. With SPD support.” (without the quotes).
-Under Site Permissions, check the “Use Remote Interfaces - Use SOAP, Web DAV, or SharePoint Designer interfaces to access the Web site.” option.
-Click Create

Now the out-of-the-box Contribute permission level can contain all the users who need contribute access but no SPD. For those users you want to give SPD access to, they can be added to the “Contribute (With SPD)” group. One caveat is if you have other applications access the SharePoint web services for the site, they will no longer work.

This web site has been configured to disallow editing with FrontPage. Contact your web site administrator for more information

To prevent users from changing a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 site or a SharePoint Server 2007 site, disable the authoring feature in SharePoint Designer 2007 by editing the Onet.xml file. By default, the Onet.xml file for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and for SharePoint Server 2007 is in the following folder:
\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\TEMPLATE\SiteTemplates\\xml

Note: Replace the placeholder with the name of the Windows SharePoint Service that is installed on the server.

For example, if the English (United States) version of Windows SharePoint Services is installed on the server, the SharePoint Team Site site template is located in the following folder:
Drive:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\TEMPLATE\SiteTemplates\XML

To do this, follow these steps:
1.On the server that is running Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 or SharePoint Server 2007, locate the site template that you want to modify. Site templates are located in the following folders on the server:
-SharePoint Team Site: Drive:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extentsions\12\Template\SiteTemplates\XML.-Meeting Workspaces: Drive:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extentsions\12\SiteTemplates\MPS\XML

Note Replace the Drive placeholder with the drive where Windows is installed.

2.Right-click the Onet.xml file, click Open With, and then click Notepad.

3.Locate the Project Title tag, and then add the following line:

DisableWebDesignFeatures=wdfopensiteThen, click Save.
The complete Project Title tag is as follows:

4.Restart Internet Information Services (IIS). To do this, follow these steps:

-Click Start, click Run, type cmd, and then click OK.
-At the command prompt, type iisreset computer_name /restart, and then press ENTER.

Note: Replace the computer_name placeholder with the name of the computer that is running IIS.

After you follow these steps, users who try to open a site that is based on the site template that has the DisableWebDesignFeatures=wdfopensite attribute will receive the following message:
 
This web site has been configured to disallow editing with FrontPage. Contact your web site administrator for more information.
 
Warning: Do not edit a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 site or a SharePoint Server 2007 site by using Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003. If you do this, you run a major risk of corrupting the site. Instead, always use SharePoint Designer 2007 to edit the site.

Server Error in '/' Application. The resource cannot be found.

Few Days before, in our project, we faced one issue while browsing the site. Don’t know, what gone wrong but got error message as mentioned below:-

Server Error in '/' Application.

HTTP 404. The resource you are looking for (or one of its dependencies) could have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable. Please review the following URL and make sure that it is spelled correctly
The resource cannot be found.

Even if you have activated the possibility to see errors and trace in SharePoint (Web application web.config --> callstack="true", customerror="off", debug="true") you won't have a precise indication of what ressource is missing.

How to troubleshoot this error message? Here is the answer...

There are two ways by which you can resolve this error message:-

Method: 1

Just right click your page and choose "view source"

Method: 2

Under the root path in IIS configuration, under "Home Directory"under the field "local path". "c:\inetpub\mywebsite\" is not the same as "c:\inetpub\mywebsite" apparently now.

My site came back alive as soon as I removed the trailing backslash so that the path now says "c:\inetpub\mywebsite"

If you have any queries/questions regarding the above mentioned information then please let me know. I would be more than happy to help you as well as resolves your issues, Thank you.

Error Scheduling Crawls: Access is Denied (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070005 (E_ACCESSDENIED))

When you set up your SSPs one of the things you will come across is Crawl Scheduling. This comes under Search Settings and allows you to configure Incremental Crawls and Full Crawls to the frequency you would like. For example, Full crawl once a day, Incremental Crawl every 5 minutes of each day.

When we tried to set the schdule incremental crawl, we faced this error message. When we filled out all the information and tried to click on Ok.

When I hit Ok I received the error:
ACCESS is DENIED. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070005 (E_ACCESSDENIED))

Resolution:-
To fix this you need to add the account WSS_WPG to the C:\Windows\Tasks folder on your Index server and apply modify rights.

If you cannot see the Security tab on the Tasks folder you need to open a command prompt and type is:
attrib -s %windir%\tasks

When you right click on the tasks folder having done this you should be able to see the Sharing & Security option.

To remove the option once you have applied the changes to the folder open command prompt again and type:
attrib +s %windir%\tasks

I hope the above steps helps you to resolve this issue. All the Best!

.swf Files Won't Play in IE7

Few days before, when i tried to put shockwave pages (.SWF files) in pageviewer webparts, it did not work. After doing some research and troubleshooting, i compare my two systems: one was using IE 6.0 and other was using IE 7.0

The .SWF files are working fine in the machine where IE 6.0 is present but the problem is with the IE 7.0. I understand this arises from a security "feature" in IE7 that blocks "Cross-Domain" shockwave objects.

I found there's a registry hack that disables this "feature."

Solution for this as mentioned below:-

Create a key named HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\Feature Control\FEATURE_BLOCK_LMZ_SCRIPT and add a REG_DWORD value to the key of 0 which should show up as 0x000000 (0)

Now my page views with .swfs in them work just fine.

Cheers!!!

Happy SharePoint to all of you…

Post Mortem of SharePoint Content Database + common queries that we can run against the content databases

Conttent Database plays a very important role in SharePoint.There are some cases when we need to look into and read from the content databases.

NOTE: Never update any SharePoint database directly. Always use the SharePoint API (Object Model) for any updates.

Before beginning the postmortem of sharepoint content database, lets focused on basic sharepoint tables as how excately they function.
Features:Table that holds information about all the activated features for each site collection or site.
Sites:Table that holds information about all the site collections for this content database.
Webs:Table that holds information about all the specific sites (webs) in each site collection.
UserInfo:Table that holds information about all the users for each site collection.
Groups:Table that holds information about all the SharePoint groups in each site collection.
Roles:Table that holds information about all the SharePoint roles (permission levels) for each site.
AllLists:Table that holds information about lists for each site.
GroupMembership:Table that holds information about all the SharePoint group members.
AllUserData:Table that holds information about all the list items for each list.
AllDocs:Table that holds information about all the documents (and all list items) for each document library and list.

Here are some common queries that we can run against the content databases.
--Query to get all the top level site collections
SELECT SiteId AS SiteGuid, Id AS WebGuid, FullUrl AS Url, Title, Author, TimeCreatedFROM dbo.WebsWHERE (ParentWebId IS NULL)

--Query to get all the SharePoint groups in a site collection
SELECT dbo.Webs.SiteId, dbo.Webs.Id, dbo.Webs.FullUrl, dbo.Webs.Title, dbo.Groups.ID AS Expr1, dbo.Groups.Title AS Expr2, dbo.Groups.DescriptionFROM dbo.Groups INNER JOINdbo.Webs ON dbo.Groups.SiteId = dbo.Webs.SiteId

--Query to get all the users in a site collection
SELECT dbo.Webs.SiteId, dbo.Webs.Id, dbo.Webs.FullUrl, dbo.Webs.Title, dbo.UserInfo.tp_ID, dbo.UserInfo.tp_DomainGroup, dbo.UserInfo.tp_SiteAdmin, dbo.UserInfo.tp_Title, dbo.UserInfo.tp_EmailFROM dbo.UserInfo INNER JOINdbo.Webs ON dbo.UserInfo.tp_SiteID = dbo.Webs.SiteId

--Query to get all the members of the SharePoint Groups
SELECT dbo.Groups.ID, dbo.Groups.Title, dbo.UserInfo.tp_Title, dbo.UserInfo.tp_LoginFROM dbo.GroupMembership INNER JOINdbo.Groups ON dbo.GroupMembership.SiteId = dbo.Groups.SiteId INNER JOINdbo.UserInfo ON dbo.GroupMembership.MemberId = dbo.UserInfo.tp_ID

--Query to get all the sites where a specific feature is activated
SELECT dbo.Webs.Id AS WebGuid, dbo.Webs.Title AS WebTitle, dbo.Webs.FullUrl AS WebUrl, dbo.Features.FeatureId, dbo.Features.TimeActivatedFROM dbo.Features INNER JOINdbo.Webs ON dbo.Features.SiteId = dbo.Webs.SiteId AND dbo.Features.WebId = dbo.Webs.IdWHERE (dbo.Features.FeatureId = '00BFEA71-D1CE-42de-9C63-A44004CE0104')

-- Query to get all the users assigned to roles
SELECT dbo.Webs.Id, dbo.Webs.Title, dbo.Webs.FullUrl, dbo.Roles.RoleId, dbo.Roles.Title AS RoleTitle, dbo.UserInfo.tp_Title, dbo.UserInfo.tp_LoginFROM dbo.RoleAssignment INNER JOINdbo.Roles ON dbo.RoleAssignment.SiteId = dbo.Roles.SiteId AND dbo.RoleAssignment.RoleId = dbo.Roles.RoleId INNER JOINdbo.Webs ON dbo.Roles.SiteId = dbo.Webs.SiteId AND dbo.Roles.WebId = dbo.Webs.Id INNER JOINdbo.UserInfo ON dbo.RoleAssignment.PrincipalId = dbo.UserInfo.tp_ID

--Query to get all the SharePoint groups assigned to roles
SELECT dbo.Webs.Id, dbo.Webs.Title, dbo.Webs.FullUrl, dbo.Roles.RoleId, dbo.Roles.Title AS RoleTitle, dbo.Groups.Title AS GroupNameFROM dbo.RoleAssignment INNER JOINdbo.Roles ON dbo.RoleAssignment.SiteId = dbo.Roles.SiteId AND dbo.RoleAssignment.RoleId = dbo.Roles.RoleId INNER JOINdbo.Webs ON dbo.Roles.SiteId = dbo.Webs.SiteId AND dbo.Roles.WebId = dbo.Webs.Id INNER JOINdbo.Groups ON dbo.RoleAssignment.SiteId = dbo.Groups.SiteId AND dbo.RoleAssignment.PrincipalId = dbo.Groups.ID

These are just some of the common queries that I have used against the content database.

Enjoy!!!

Office Server Search Service cannot be started because it does not exist.(Object reference not set to an instance of an object)

Office Server Search Service cannot be started because it does not exist.
Few Days before, I tried to setup my lab and after the installation, i tried to start the search service but mystery is here, when i checked CA-operations-services on server-OSEARCH is not there. I have the right key , the right CD and the latest fixes.I installed it and it is simply not there.
As you can probably guess, there’s nothing wrong with your PC or Cd or key, you simply did not installed the server in the correct way to receive all the services.

Please check:-
regedit and check the value under the following key :
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0\WSS\
ServerRole
Possible options:
WFE
APPLICATION
SINGLESERVER

Each option means :
WFE - Windows SharePoint Services Web Application (no search , no excel, no ssp, just web server)
APPLICATION –Everything (and you can add the server to a farm)
SINGLESERVER –Everything (but you cannot add the server to a farm , and most probably you have MSDE or SQL Server Express on the box too)

To change the installation mode for the server (even if you managed to create webapplications and set-up your sharepoint config db), here’s the procedure:
-Detach the server from the farm
-Uninstall Sharepoint
-Reboot the server
-Re-install Sharepoint in Advanced mode and select your desired server role.
-Run the configuration wizard and re-attach the server to the original farm (config_db)
You should get the applications back and everything else in place, as they were but with new services in the farm.