I WON!!!

I won something, I actually won something!!

And I hear you think "what did he win"? I won a copy of Microsoft Office 2007 Ultimate!!
Ok, I already had that via my MSDN subscription, but hey....I never win something and now I did!! Of course I am excited :-)

Sysinternals tools

Recently Microsoft has bought the company Winternals. Winternals also supplied the excellent Sysinternals tools. A lot of people worldwide thought that this would be the end of those tools. Fortunately, this is not the case. They are still available and will be in the future.

During a session, given by Otto Helweg, the current situation and plans for the future passed the scene. The tools still are and will remain free. Available via the site, as a one by one download or by downloading the Sysinternals Suite and getting all tools at the same time. By average, the tools are downloaded 50.000 times a day, with the Process Explorer being the absolute number one.
Some changes to the lold Sysinternals icensing model are:

1. You are not allowed to redistribute the tools yourself
2. They are free to use on every pc you own.

This last change is very anoying for Service Providers. Fortunately, it is possible for them to contact Microsoft and work out a way to solve this licensing issue.
Since 2007, Microsoft has added a EULA approval to the Sysinternal tools. This caused lots of automated scripts to stop functioning, waiting for an acceptance to the EULA. Microsoft has added an "/accepteula" option to the tools to get around it.
One thing that I did not know is that the Process Monitor is a replacement for the FileMon and RegMon tools. Both tools are still available for download, but why use it if you have one integrated tool.
An issue I ran into in a project where we tried to use PSExec, is that it is not possible to start a remote PowerShell script. Somehow PowerShell does start, but is not running the script. Otto mentioned the new Windows Remote Shell, which is available in Vista, Windows Server 2008 and as seperate download somewhere over the next 6 months for XP and Windows Server 2003 to solve this issue. Too bad that we are running W2K3 at the moment :-)
Anyway, the goal of Microsoft is to expand the number of tools and functionalities in the future. Maybe even create PowerShell commandlet equivalents.

TechEd 2007 has started!!

This morning Bob Muglia (Senior Vice President Server and Tools Business) opened TechEd 2007 with his keynote. It started with a view backstage of Bob after his keynote. He had been targeted with fruits and vegtables, but then........Doc Brown (you know, the guy from Back To The Future) appeared to the rescue with his very own DeLorean, IT Style. He took Bob "Back to the history" to see what happened with Microsofts visions. After they returned to the current time they drove on stage with the DeLorean.

After some uplifting words from Doc, he started his keynote. This time not about Microsoft visions, but about real world problems and how to fix them. With Infrastructure Optimization, System Center Configuration Manager, System Center Virtual Machine Manager and System Center Operations Manager modeling your IT environment and from there move forward, changing split between the costs for maintaining your environment and implementing new solutions to increase efficiency, becomes easier than ever.

We are here!! TechEd 2007!!

I am writing this post from the TechEd 2007 in Orlando, Florida. After getting out of bed at 4am CET to go to Schiphol (Amsterdam) it is now 20 hours later and I have just completed registration. In a couple of minutes I am going to my hotel for a well deserved shower (yes, I need one), some diner and then a good night sleep.

Over the next few days I will post all things that I learn over here. So keep an eye on my blog!!

[Update] Just arrived in my hotel The Caribe Royale and man it is good!! It has a great pool including waterfalls and my room is on the top floor with excellent view!! In other words....I think I will survive this week just barely :-)

Oh and just one other thing: Can anyone tell me why the cabs of the "Yellow Cab Company" are orange?? As a dutchman I don't mind the color, but the name is a little confusing :-p

[MOSS2007] Issue with starting the Central Admin component on another server

On an environment I have just installed I ran into an issue when I tried to start the Central Admin component on a second server. The environment consisted of two load balanced web servers and an application server. The application server had been installed first, so was running the Central Admin component. IIS had been installed on the D drive on this server.

When I tried to start the Central Admin component on one of the web servers (which only had a C partition), the component refused to start. After looking through the logs the cause turned out to be that SharePoint tried to configure the Central Admin on the D partition, because the application server also had been installed on the D partition. The only way to get around this was to create a D-partition on the web servers.

So when you are installing a SharePoint 2007 environment, make sure all partitions on all servers are the same. Or at least the drive letters.

[MOSS2007] SP1 to be released soon!!

I have just heard that SP1 is planned to be released in June/July 2007…..so quite soon.

[MOSS2007] Configure SharePoint 2007 to show the PDF icon [UPDATED]

To configure SharePoint 2007 to show the PDF icons with PDF documents, do the following:

1. Download the pdf icon.
2. Copy the image to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web server extensions\12\Template\Images
3. Edit the docicon.xml in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web server extensions\12\Template\XML and add: <Mapping Key="pdf" Value="icpdf.gif" />
4. Perform an IISReset.
5. Voila, you are done!!

PDF Icon:

[MOSS2007] Missing “Up” button in folder

I have just ran into the following issue:
When you open a document library which contains folder, the breadcrumb trail above the document library enables you to go back up into the folder structure. But when you show this library on a SharePoint page using a webpart, after going into the folder the only way to get back up is to use the “Back” button of your browser. In SharePoint 2003 the toolbar showed an “Up” button, but this button seems to have disappeared in SharePoint 2007.

Also when you apply one of the other masterpages which are supplied out-of-the-box (for example, BlueBand.Master) the breadcrumb trail which works in the default masterpage seems to break as well.

I think this might be an issue to be fixed in SP1 :-)

[MOSS2007] PDF and SharePoint 2007

Just like in SharePoint 2003, SharePoint 2007 does not show the pdf icon and is not able to index these files. But fortunately Microsoft made it possible to reconfigure SharePoint yourself and upload an icon and install a PDF iFilter. Adobe created an iFilter to accomplish this.

SharePoint 2003 only came as a 32-bit version, but with SharePoint 2007 SharePoint can be installed as a 64-bit version as well. And here is the catch……Adobe has not released a 64-bit version of its iFilter yet and it looks like it won’t be available for a very long time (come on Adobe!!).

To solve this issue you have several options:

1. Reinstall the server with 32-bit Windows and reinstall SharePoint…….ok, not really an option.
2. Not index PDF files at all…….ok, also not an option.
3. Beg Adobe to create a 64-bit version of their iFilter…….ok, you have something to do for about 5 minutes but it won’t solve your problem. But if you have nothing to do……go ahead: Submit Product Enhancement
4. Try to trick MOSS into accepting the 32-bit version of the iFilter…….uhm, do you really want to?

But fortunately there is a fifth solution!! A company called FoxIT released a alternative PDF iFilter............and they created a 64-bit version as well…..and it is free!! What more do you want?? Great, isn’t it :-)

So go ahead and download the 32-bit version or the 64-bit version

Happy indexing!!

Error when trying to create a crawl schedule for a content source

When you try to configure a crawl schedule for a content source, you will receive the error message:
Access is denied. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070005 (E_ACCESSDENIED)

This is a known issue and Microsoft has published a solution on their site: KB926959