Windows 7 Security and managing UAC Prompts.

Windows 7 migrations are in full swing or completed.  As part of this desktop refresh, many companies have removed local administrative rights on the endpoint and are using the Windows 7 built-in security features.  Have these met your expectations?  Are your end users calling IT support to get assistance with prompts for UAC passwords?

Darren Mar-Elia, Microsoft Group Policy MVP, will walk us through the components of the Windows built-in security features and in which situations they work the best.  He’ll also introduce other methods for enhancing endpoint security within Windows 7 as related to managing UAC dialog boxes and best practices for managing administrator rights.

Next, Viewfinity will show you how to suppress the UAC dialog box and manage rights and privileges on Windows endpoints and servers. Using a fully automated process to identify common privilege needs across the entire user base, you can aggregate privilege needs and create a single policy for a collective group of users.  No longer will the removal of administrator rights be disruptive to your end users or a burden on IT.

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Curtsey: Windows IT Pro

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Upgrading to SharePoint 2013 from MOSS 2007.

As we all know SharePoint 2013 is bundled with all new features which give extendibility to the existing business processes.  Notably, the SharePoint platform is also be improved with some great new features. The new version promises updates to Claims-Based Authentication, Business Connectivity Services (BCS), eDiscovery, Business Intelligence and Workflows, among other features.

You’ll also notice several new Service Applications bundled with SharePoint, such as App Management, Machine Translation and the Work Management Service Application

The SharePoint user interface is also getting a design makeover, with cues from Microsoft’s Metro UI design principles

And there are a couple critical points here, which we need to consider before we plan to upgrade to SharePoint 2013.

1.      There is no direct upgrade path from SharePoint 2007 to 2013. You must have a current version (SharePoint 2010 Foundation or Server) in place before upgrading to the next version. Is your organization still using a 2007 version of SharePoint (WSS or MOSS)? Or perhaps even using SharePoint Portal Server 2003 (v. 2.0)? Well, you’re not alone. If you’re considering SharePoint 2013, now may be the perfect time to start migrating from your older installation to SharePoint 2010. That way you’ll be prepared for a smooth transition to the new software.

2.      The underlying server components for SharePoint 2013 are also being upgraded. Earlier this year Microsoft released its new database server, SQL Server 2012. And Windows Server 2012 is anticipated for public release before the end of this year. So, if you want to be ready when SharePoint 2013 rolls out, this is an ideal time to start considering migrating to the newest versions of Windows Server and SQL Server while you’re at it.

So, in a sense, upgrading to SharePoint 2013 is also going to be kind of a big deal. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be a big hassle.

If you need any assistance with the SharePoint 2013 upgrade or its plan, do let me know. It would be my pleasure to help you out with that.

 

Expiration Policy or Information Policy Management: Aborted

Few days back I have noticed that in our environment the Expiration Policy started successfully, however aborted after few min. This was happening for few days. There were no Event logs, no service drop alert.

The depth was left to be searched, yes correct the USL logs. In ULS logs we found some of the references form Information Policy Management service failed due the access blocked on the site.

ULS logs entry: Error message

10/23/2012 23:03:18.48             OWSTIMER.EXE (0x2D7C)                       0x22B4  DLC Server                                Information Policy Management        5016     Critical  Expiration Service for site https://SharePointServer.com/sites/SharePointSitecollection failed. Access to this Web site has been blocked.  Please contact the administrator to resolve this problem

Why this happen

While processing the information Policy Management configured on some of the lib., the expiration policy service don’t find reference of the site because its access is blocked. Hence aborted or terminates its execution.

Resolution: 

Go to central admin -> Applications Mgt. tab -> Site collection quotas and locks -> Check if the site is locked and change status to not locked and see next time if expiration policy works or not.

If you have any questions/queries, do let me know, I would be try my level best to answer those.  

SharePoint Logs Showing Unexpected Error Related to CMS/Cached Values?

Error: While taking a look at our SharePoint logs, we noticed a very large number of entries similar to the following:

11/06/2012 08:23:11.47  w3wp.exe (0x276C)                        0x1BF0 CMS                            Publishing                     0 Unexpected Cached Value found.  Value is False 
11/06/2012 08:23:11.47  w3wp.exe (0x276C)                        0x1BF0 CMS                            Publishing                     0 Unexpected XXX / is a descendent of / - False)

By looking at this we see one of these for each site/subsite in the site collection, as well as individual pages, but we are unsure of what process would be going through the entire site like this.

Resolution:

Some people were suggesting that this error occurred only after you upgrade your environment with June 2011 or Aug 2011 cumulative updates. It’s been one and half year since MS had releases 2011 cumulative updates and surely this could not be the possible cause of issue in our environment. So far MS has been suggesting disabling logging for the "Publishing" category as that's what has been suggested in other similar cases as well.

With Microsoft Support it goes by like this:

"As discussed earlier today, this issue is a bug. A bug request is filed for this to the product group and we are waiting for an outcome. This may however take some time. In the meantime the workaround is to go into the Diagnostic Logging section and set the option to NONE for the Publishing category. I have also checked around to see if there is other way to work around this but there does not seem to be any for the moment”.

Finally MS suggested us change the logging method in our environment which had fixed the issue for us. Below are the stsadm commands for your reference.

Set Publishing to none.

stsadm  -o setlogginglevel -category “Publishing” –tracelevel none windowslogginglevel none

stsadm  -o listlogginglevel

Restart the Tracing Service

net stop sptracer

net start sptrace

If you have any queries \ questions, do let me know, I would be happy to answer those.