Profile Sync not working

I came across an issue with the Site Memberships link when using the Personalization feature Site Memberships. This automatically adds a link that you are a MEMBER of to your MyLinks-SharepointSites feature.

Unfortunately when you are either removed from a membership group or the site gets deleted the links do not get updated.

After researching and finding a resolution it actually resolved another issue we were having. When a user's profile information changes the information within the sites they have access to do not get updated. So for example, my title changed from Assoc. Systems Administrator to Systems Administrator and when logging into the Portal and selected the dropdown on my name on the top of the page and clicking on My Settings which brings you to the _layouts/userdisp.aspx page. The information never gets updated. The only way to update this so far was to login to a site and make some type of edit, upload, delete. This would manually cause the Profile Sync to run.

How did this happen?
We moved content database improperly!
Why does this break the sync? We store the ID for the content database in the Config database. By not moving the content database properly we don't prepare the SSP for a new GUID, and the Timer Jobs will continue to try to sync with the old GUID not allowing us to sync with the new one.

The preparetomove operation was introduced before Infrastructure Update. Once SP2 is applied this is no longer required.
How I fixed was:
a. Run the command stsadm -o sync -listolddatabases 1 You should then get a list of database GUID.
b. Run the command stsadm -o sync -deleteolddatabases 1 This will remove the record from the SSP database but will not touch the actual Content Database.
c. Then wait for the next sync and you should see tags getting updated.

To force the Profile Sync timer job to run use this command:stsadm -o sync -synctiming "m:5" (This sets it to 5 minutes) To set it back to 1 hour use this:stsadm -o sync -synctiming "h:1"

This fixed my user profile issue and the Site Memberships issue. I will wait a few days and verify it's still working.

"Edit in Data Sheet" Display Error on 2003 after installing SP3

When trying to use Edit in Data Sheet view after applying SP3 to Sharepoint 2003 users get nothing. There is a fix I found that resolved the issue.

Open the file ows.js (Path: C:\Program Files\Common Files\MicrosoftShared\web server extensions\60\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\1033) on your sharepointserver and search for the Method PortalPinToMyPage. After this insertfollowing javascript code:

function RenderActiveX(str){
document.write(str);
}

Restart your server ( I didn't even have to restart and it worked fine)
Visit any Sharepoint List and Ctrl-F5 the page and It's works !!!!
It came from this post.
http://www.eggheadcafe.com/conversation.aspx?messageid=33280331&threadid=33251953

Delete Orphan App Pools

When I browse to Central Administration -> Operations -> Service Accounts -> Choose Web application pool -> Choose Windows SharePoint Services Web Application. In the list of Application Pools you will see any application pool ever created. Even if they were deleted. I found this post to help me delete them.

I found the ID by using Codeplex free tool SharePoint Manager. Here you will see all app pools as well. I wasn't sure if I could delete from here or not so to be safe I used the command below.
stsadm.exe -o deleteconfigurationobject -id


http://blogs.technet.com/nishants/archive/2008/10/10/how-to-delete-orphan-configuration-objects-from-sharepoint-farm.aspx

You actually can just delete from SharePoint Manager.

Remove Title from RSS Feed.

Edit the webpart and open the XSL editor.
The section in the XSL that affects the display of the feed's Title is

Just comment out the div class="groupheader item medium" piece of code

Site Collection created half-way - Orphan

I tried for weeks to delete a site collection that has somehow got created halfway.

When I go to Central Administration - Application Management - Delete Site collection and click on the site I want to delete I see blank data in the right hand side and when I select it the delete button is greyed out. When trying to delete from stsadm I get the error:

Cannot complete this action.

Please try again.

I tried to delete it with stsadm -o deletsite -force but still same error.
Someone recommended deleting the content db. So what I did was

Created a new content db.
Backed up all Site Collection within the Content DB.
Deleted all Site Collections using that Content DB.
Made the original Content DB offline.
Restored all Site collections back and they automatically get created in the New Content DB.

Then removed the original content db and the half-way created site collection is gone.
No more bogus site collections.

You should also be able to just remove the content db and add it back but I felt I needed to back them up to be safe. I only had a few. If you have hundreds you may have to do it that way.

Go to Content DB where orphan site collection is and make note of all settings. Select remove content db and then go to stsadm and do an addcontentdb with the same exact name. Your site collections will reappear without the orphaned one.

Error deleting site due to MS IT Site Delete

While trying to delete a site collection we are receiving this error:

Delete site operation cancelled by user. Check the log files for additional details

After hours and hours of research I checked the Windows Assembly folder. Though we uninstalled the MS IT Site delete program the .dll was never uninstalled. Once I uninstalled it the site in question now deleted successfully.

Error opening site: HRESULT:0x80041051

Received this error in QA after stopping the Forefront services.
According to this post it states to run:http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/forefrontSharePoint/thread/3f20ae34-03ba-4da0-af20-2b6cfa61663b/

SELECT *
FROM Docs
WHERE (VirusStatus > 0) AND (VirusStatus IS NOT NULL)

You should get results. Then run:
Update dbo.allDocs Set VirusVendorID=NULL, VirusStatus=NULL, VirusInfo=NULLwhere (VirusStatus > 0) AND (VirusStatus IS NOT NULL)

Sites should be accessible. But we had issues still. So I had to start the Forefront services and stop it from within Forefront by disabling manual scan and bypassing realtime scan. Then ran the queries again and all sites were functional.

Site Master vs. System Master

Change the master page for a site collection/subsite.

Publishing features much be turned on to see Master Page settings under Look and Feel. Once turned on you can change your master page.

Site Master: The site master page will be used by all publishing pages. (That’s great for the Internet and Intranet publishing site, but not for many of the subsites)

System Master: Use the system master page for all forms and view pages in this site. (let me amend this with these are all the site templates and pages that the site master does not apply to, including team sites, document workspaces, web part pages, and all non publishing pages.

December Cumulative Updates Error

Error while running config wizard after December Cumulative Updates.

Upgrade object too new (build version = 12.0.0.6300, schema version = 2.0.0.0). Current server (build version = 12.0.0.4518, schema version = 3.0.1.0).
CanUpgrade [SPContentDatabase Name=SharePoint_AdminContent_3e3c45c0-bf44-42e2-b4a4-2bff9beab942 Parent=SPDatabaseServiceInstance Name=OfficeServers] failed.

The specified SPContentDatabase Name=SharePoint_AdminContent_3e3c45c0-bf44-42e2-b4a4-2bff9beab942 Parent=SPDatabaseServiceInstance Name=OfficeServers has been upgraded to a newer version of SharePoint. Please upgrade this SharePoint application server before attempting to access this object.

FIX: Uninstall Groupboard workspace from server and run config wizard again.
Version should now be 12.0.0.6335

Unhide Event Content Type - Calendar

To unhide the 'Event' content type to make another content type based on it (without any coding):

1. Go into the 'List settings' for an existing calendar on your site 2. Click on 'Advanced Settings' and tick yes for "Allow Management of Content Types" 3. This then shows the 'Event' content type in that calendar's List Settings. 4. Click on the word 'Event' in the list of content types. 5. At the top of the next page it tells you that the parent is also called 'Event' - click on its link. 6. The following page tells you that the parent content type is in Group "_Hidden". 7. Click on the "Name, Description & Group" link and then it allows you to put the 'Event' content type into a new group. I put it into "List Content Types".

Voila! If I then go to create a new content type, the Event content type is selectable (under the parent of List Content Types)

Central Administration page is unavailable after Forefront Uninstall

After uninstalling Forefront I came across issues launching Central Administration. When checking the Event Viewer there are 2 errors: 2268 and 2214.

Forefront leaves a reference to a .dll in the metabase when you uninstall the program. I searched and came across this article from Microsoft. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/943621
So I followed this by opening up the metabase.xml file located in windows\system32\inetsrv and removing these lines:

Once this was done everything was working normally.