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Category: Troubleshooting

DevConnections 2013 Recap

DevConnections 2013 Recap

DevConnections 2013 was an amazing conference, as it has in all years past. The attendees are always hyper-engaged and come with tons of questions. As a presenter, nothing makes me happier than helping people understand the concepts I am covering better than when they walked into my sessions.  Thanks to Scot Hillier for being an amazing track chair and moderating the panel on Tuesday afternoon. During DevConnections I did 3 sessions (2 of which were recorded) and a panel session…

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Debugging an Explorer View issue

Debugging an Explorer View issue

During a recent SharePoint 2010 upgrade project, we applied SP1 and DEC 2012 CU & encountered a frustrating issue. Everything in the farm was working as expected after we did the installation & ran PSCONFIG, except for an issue where some users could not use Explorer View to open some Document Libraries. More detailed user testing revealed that the issue only occurred for user who were using computers running Windows Vista or later. Windows XP users could open in explorer…

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When in doubt, check ALL the permissions…

When in doubt, check ALL the permissions…

Having just completed my last speaking engagement of 2012 it was time to get back into the swing of things and start playing with troubleshooting a bit.  The dilemma In a continuing effort to evolve my PowerShell build script for SharePoint I spent a few hours with my team playing with different settings.  One of my team members was driving to get better hands on experience with using PowerShell to configure SharePoint. We started with the very standard PSConfig script…

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SharePoint 2010 & Site Directory revisited: bug fix request rejected by Microsoft

SharePoint 2010 & Site Directory revisited: bug fix request rejected by Microsoft

We received the official, and well thought out, answer back from Microsoft regarding the Site Directory bug that I reported on with my post “SharePoint 2010 and the Site Directory” back in December 2010.   Here is the official answer from Microsoft: Issue Summary Site collection creation fails with access denied error when the master site directory site collection is located on a web application which is using the new claims aware authentication method. Cause for Rejection and Technical Explanation…

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SharePoint 2010’s Visio Graphics Services: EventIDs 8061 & 8046 unmasked

SharePoint 2010’s Visio Graphics Services: EventIDs 8061 & 8046 unmasked

Getting EventIDs 8061 & 8046 in your ULS Logs and Event Logs on your application server?  Having trouble figuring out exactly what they are trying to tell you?  Finding inconsistent results between site collections?  Let’s dive in… Here are the offending errors: TechNet tells us: quoting directly from the article linked here Symptoms:   One or more of the following symptoms might appear: A file or files might not load. This event appears in the event log: Event ID: 8061 Description:…

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How to: Fix the "Unable to access SharePoint sites from the localhost" problem

How to: Fix the "Unable to access SharePoint sites from the localhost" problem

Ever try to access a page on your SharePoint site from your web front end only to get prompted for a login that never lets you through? The issue happens when dealing with sites that Integrated Authentication and have names that are mapped to the loopback address.  Translation:  if you are using Windows with Claims or Classic Mode web applications  and you are trying to connect from the server, this is you. The LoopbackCheck security feature is enabled by default…

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SharePoint 2010 & SQL 2008 R2 build numbers and helpful patching links

SharePoint 2010 & SQL 2008 R2 build numbers and helpful patching links

In an effort to make life simpler I have compiled a short list of useful link to build numbers and patching sites for SharePoint 2010 and SQL 2008 R2. The Microsoft SharePoint Updates PagesSharePoint 2010 – http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ff800847.aspx SharePoint 2007- http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/office/sharepointserver/bb735839.aspx This is your official sites for downloading the SharePoint updates from Microsoft.  Highly useful rather than waiting on the blogger community to send you a link, or get the TechNet bulletin, your carrier pigeon to arrive, or any of the…

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SharePoint 2010 Farm Service Account passwords expired?!?!?!?

SharePoint 2010 Farm Service Account passwords expired?!?!?!?

Scenario: Managed service accounts passwords expired.  Access to part of Central Administration are no longer accessible.  Sites are starting to go down because app pool passwords are managed accounts and have expired. Soapbox moment: Firstly, there is NO real excuse for this in SharePoint 2010 because the ability to have this done automagically for you is BUILT-IN, so either your farm admin is so over taxed (usually the case) or incompetent (the two aren’t mutually exclusive).  I take the liberty…

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Random Server hang issues result in a required hard reset

Random Server hang issues result in a required hard reset

Symptom: Windows 2008 R2 64bit systems hang at random and require a hard reboot of the system to recover. You can remote to the system via KVM (RDP is not accessible) and even do a CTRL+ALT+DEL, but after the lock screen goes away and tries to give you a login screen… YOU GET NOTHING. Only silence… Root Cause: We ended up with a three headed root cause on this set of issues. 1.) Our blades had a bad BIOS version…

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Windows with Claims User gets access denied to a site they had access to earlier in the day

Windows with Claims User gets access denied to a site they had access to earlier in the day

Scenario: Small Farm 3 tiered topology using Windows with Claims implementation aggregating AD with a custom LDAP database to create the claims roles. Symptom: Users of a SharePoint 2010 site get access denied to a site they could access earlier in the day.  As the day goes on, the number of users effected increases.  Eventually only users with full control policies can access the farm. ULS Log error: An exception occurred in Custom Roles claim provider when calling SPClaimProvider.FillResolve(): The…

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