I was configuring a new virtual image today for some upcoming client work, and since my new laptop is now x64, by base image for all future virtual images is Windows Server 2008 R2 (with SQL Server 2008 Development edition installed already). Since R2 is quite new still, I figured I would at least hit one roadblock, and sure enough I did.

I had installed WSS 3.0 with SP2, without any issues (a command line based install, which instructions for can be found here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc752946.aspx), and fired up the installation for Search Server Express 2008, when I hit this gem:

The error itself is a little confusing, especially since I was running the x64 install, and the message indicates an x86 binary… anyways… It turns out that Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 SP2 needs to be slipstreamed into the Search Server 2008 Express install to do so. I will post the instructions below, but, to give credit where credit is due, thanks to Andy Kemp’s blog post here for the instructions – it saved whatever precious hair I have left on my head for other, more important things.

First, open up a command prompt, and extract Search Server Express to it’s own folder, which can be run by the following command

SearchServerExpress.exe /extract:drive:\path\folder

Then download the MOSS 2007 SP2 (x64) executable from here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=b7816d90-5fc6-4347-89b0-a80deb27a082&displaylang=en

And extract it to the Updates subfolder of the folder that you had extracted Search Server Express to, by running the following command

officeserver2007sp2-kb953334-x64-fullfile-en-us.exe /extract:drive:\path\folder\Updates

Then just run the Setup.exe executable from within the Search Server Express 2008 folder, and you’re good to go.

 

While not directly SharePoint, or even Microsoft related, I had to share this tip. I was updating a graphic in a SharePoint site today, which someone else had done, and could not get in contact with them, I had an interesting problem, in which anyone who has done any sort of design has probably come across at some point – how do you find a font based solely on an image?

I found the answer via a quick Google Bing search > http://new.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/

MyFonts.com has a neat online utility now, that, allows you to upload an image…

it then attempts to isolate the letters, with verification from you, the end user…

and then attempts to return some possible results!

While I did not find any direct matches with Bing, it is a very cool program, and did work in my case. It may not be the EXACT same font, but, it was 99.5% there, and did the job I needed it to. I think probably the best design feature MyFonts.com put on the results page, is the scrolling image you had uploaded, so that you could accurately match it up with the example results shown.

The WCF Hotfix (KB976462) for Windows Server 2008 R2 is now available from Microsoft Connect finally, so, if you have been having issues installing SharePoint on Windows Server 2008 R2, you should now be good to go: http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?DownloadID=23806

 

In addition to what I have posted over the past few days regarding the SharePoint 2010 Beta 2 awe and wonderment, I will be keeping this blog entry as my running post for hosting links to other blogs, resources, etc, regarding installation and configuration considerations.

• Bill Baer - Installation Notes for Microsoft SharePoint Server and Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 Beta
• Sahil Malik - SharePoint 2010 Development Environment – Practical Tips
• Erik Kraus - SharePoint 2010 Beta 2 is finally here!
• Jei Li - Installation Notice for SharePoint 2010 Public Beta
• MSDN - Setting Up the Development Environment for SharePoint Server
• SharePoint Dev Wiki - Install SharePoint 2010 Public Beta on Standalone Windows Server 2008

 

I am pleased to announce that I will be speaking at SharePoint Saturday DC (well, actually Reston, VA) on Saturday, December 5th. There is a trio of excellent people organizing this event (Dan Usher, Dux Raymond Sy, and Gino Degregori) so it should be a good one!

The event registration sold out on the same day registration had opened, however, you can still sign up for the waiting list here: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/484037770

I will again be presenting my session “Introduction to Developing Custom Actions within SharePoint”, however a modified version based on prior feedback and time limitations from the Boston, Baltimore, and New York City events.

An official speaker and session list has not been released to the SharePoint Saturday DC site as of yet, however, you can follow along to the chatter in twitter by searching for hashtag #spsdc, and be sure to follow @SPSaturday_DC, @usher, and @meetdux for more information regarding the event.

I am excited to be involved in yet another SharePoint Saturday event, and am looking forward to presenting, seeing some old friends, and making some new ones.

 

SharePoint Designer is an invaluable tool for site administrators and developers within SharePoint. After the Microsoft SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas, and seeing all of the great things that Microsoft has done to improve this tool from its humble beginnings back when it was FrontPage. So, naturally that I now have full-on access to the 2010 Beta, I am anxious to start playing around with SharePoint Designer 2010 first hand.

The first step in this process of course, is to get it installed. To do so, I am starting from the first site I have created in my new environment.

Going to the Site Actions menu (it’s moved by the way, over to the left side of the page from 2007), I select Edit Site in SharePoint Designer

Since I do not already have Designer 2010 installed, a dialog window pops up, basically letting me know that I do not have it installed, and I can do so. Just like SharePoint Designer 2007, SharePoint Designer 2010 will be free for all users. And since the Beta is all that is around now, that’s what it will install for me.

I select the language I am looking to install SharePoint Designer in (English, German, Spanish, Japanese, French, Russian, and Chinese are other available languages that can be selected, in addition to English, as shown above), and choose my platform. Even though SharePoint 2010 is only 64-bit, SharePoint Designer 2010 is available in both 32 and 64 bit, as it is intended to be run from the desktop, and many of us still run 32 bit desktops, as we probably will for a long time to come.

Once done, selecting the Download button goes out and fetches the right download, and prompts me to run and/or save it.

It’s sizeable for my options as chosen (English 64-bit) at 277MB, happy that I have a nice and fast connection.

Once it’s up and running, the installer will extract the files, and then move on.

You have the usual EULA, agree and continue

Once accepted, you really cannot miss what is needed on the next screen. Microsoft made sure of that.

However, you can customize your installation by clicking on the Customize button, setting a new installation directory, setting your user information, and adding or removing features from the install. With the default installation, its a fairly hefty installation at 1.03G, but, I have a feeling it will be well worth it…

The installation begins (of course after you have clicked the Install Now button.

And that’s it. You’re done!

 

This is a quick visual guide to installing and configuring Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Beta 2, as it is from my experience. My environment is configured as such:

• Virtual Image running on VMWare Player, on top of Windows 7 Enterprise x64
• Windows Server 2008 R2
• SQL Server 2008 SP1 CU2
• AD, SQL, and SharePoint all co-existing on the same virtual image

This tour will not encompass the SQL or AD configuration however. Possibly in a later post I will cover those, but, just wanted to share the experience of configuring this beauty from a first-timer’s perspective. My friend Erik Kraus has a nice post with details and links to great sources of information regarding prerequisites, and installation instructions here: http://blogs.msdn.com/ekraus/archive/2009/11/17/sharepoint-2010-beta-2-is-finally-here.aspx

First, you will need to download the beta, then double click the executable file, and you’re off to the races.

 

Checking the first option allows you to review the hardware and software requirements for SharePoint 2010. These are important! I suggest you do so before continuing. Once you have read these, it also make sense to read the installation guide.

Once you have read up on the requirements and installation procedures, it is time to move on down the line to the Install software prerequisites action. This will run through the SharePoint Products and Technologies 2010 Preparation tool, which as the screenshot below dictates, it installs and configures the following products:

• Application Server Role
• Web Server (IIS) Role
• Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Native Client
• Microsoft “Geneva” Framework Runtime
• Microsoft Sync Framework Runtime v1.0 (x64)
• Microsoft Chart Controls fro Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5
• Microsoft Filter Pack 2.0
• Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services ADOMD.NET

Click Next >

Agree to the EULA and click Next >

The tool will then run through its paces, and if all goes well, you will see the following screen, letting you know that all the prerequisites have been installed or enabled.

You will now be back at the trusty splash screen. Go ahead and click on Install SharePoint Server

 

Then enter in your product key, which will be validated, and once so, the Continue button will light up. Click it.

Agree to another EULA and click Continue

In this “Choose Your Own Adventure” story, I selected Server Farm.

Editor’s Note: Unfortunately I missed a screenshot here, of the Server Type screen. I hope to have a screenshot of it here shortly. Onwards!

Next, on the File Location screen, these are the defaults, which I kept, as I only have the one partition on my virtual image. Then click Install Now if you are fine with these settings

The installation begins! Once this process finishes, you will be presented with the following screen to run the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard – let’s do that.

The wizard will then load. Go ahead and click Next > to begin.

You’ll get this familiar pop-up.. go ahead and click Yes.

Choose Create a new server farm and click Next >

Here you will need to specify your database configuration settings. Fill those in and click Next >

If by chance you are not “up to code” on your version of SQL, you will get this error

Otherwise, you will see this next screen

Here, you will specify a password for your new SharePoint farm. As it states above, the password “is used to secure farm configuration data and is required for each server that joins the farm”. It also states that it can be changed, but, you may want to jot this down somewhere. Once entered, click Next >

Specify the Central Administration port (I am partial to 9999), or let it auto-assign a random port for you. And choose your authentication method. I stuck with NTLM for now. This can be changed later on. If you decided on Kerberos here, you’d get this message after clicking Next >

But I didn’t, so we didn’t see that…. so after clicking Next > we see the following summary screen.

Click Next > here to apply these settings, or, click < Back to go back and change these if needed.

This will then kick off into the 10 step configuration process.

On successful configuration, and clicking Finish, you will be directed into Central Administration to the following URL: http://sp2010dev-01:9999/_admin/adminconfigintro.aspx?scenarioid=adminconfig&welcomestringid=farmconfigurationwizard_welcome

And you can see your new baby for the first time. Awww… so sweet and cuddly. I think I’ll name her Jane.

You will first be prompted to join the Customer Experience Improvement Program, I selected yes, and went on my merry way.

That is it for now… more to come soon! Thanks for watching.

 

So, here I am, going through my installation of the SharePoint 2010, and received my first error! The error (full text below), came while configuring the services via the Initial Farm Configuration Wizard

Errors occured.

The service application proxy "User Profile Service Application" could not be provisioned because of the following error: Unrecognized attribute 'allowInsecureTransport'. Note that attribute names are case-sensitive. (C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\WebClients\Profile\client.config line 56)

Corelation Id: bf7f0c8a-97f2-4250-b4e5-04c4d74eff3e

DOH! In addition to this error, not only is this halting my forward progress, and not this has anything really to do with anything, but, hopefully they run a spell check before this gets to RTM. There are two spelling mistakes in the message above (bolded and underlined). Anyways, I did a bit of searching on the interwebs for this, and it appears that it is a known issue on both Windows 7, and, Server 2008 R2, the latter of which I am running.

It appears that there is a fix coming down the pipe from Microsoft, according to this post on the SharePoint TechNet Forums: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepoint2010general/thread/041ddc78-8d18-4753-b7be-8d8113e26e62, as there is an issue with WCF on the two aforementioned platforms, as they share the same core.

There are also workarounds posted (like here: http://mphacker.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!8040CC624DDC5404!790.entry), however, these come in the form of modifying a file within the “SharePoint Root” [14 Hive] (the file mentioned in the error). This is unsupported, but, guess what, so is the Beta copy of SharePoint 2010. However, in the article above, some issues have arisen by modifying the file directly.

There is no release date that I am aware of for the patch, however, a search on Google nets the following

It appears it was there at some point, however, it has since been removed (“Sorry, but we couldn't find the page that you requested.”). I’ll make another post as soon as I see it comes out. In the meantime, I am holding off on my installation until the fix comes out so I can have a “clean” fresh install.

 

Did I mention I was excited? After all of this hype, and my excessive drooling at the SharePoint Conference this year… I am installing SharePoint 2010.

If by chance you did attend (or did not attend) the SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas a few weeks ago, and if you did attend (or did not attend) the additional day for the all day post-conference developer session on Friday, October 23rd, hosted by Andrew Connell and Ted Pattison of Critical Path Training, they now have the videos online over at Microsoft’s Channel 9 here: http://channel9.msdn.com/learn/courses/SharePoint2010Developer/ of the same content that was delivered (probably however missing the Developer v. Admin joking that took place, with the all-day Admin course happening next door).

Lots of great information during this session, so much so, that I have been waiting for these to come out so that I could review them again. In fact, I think I’ll do that now!

 

You know, this annoying message when you fire up Internet Explorer?

It’s fairly easy to do. Go to Start > Administrative Tools > Server Manager and from the main screen, there is a section called Security Information (screenshot below). You will notice some actions to the right of the security information summary. You will see one for Configure IE ESC, click that.

And the next screen is straight-forward, you have the option to turn it off for Administrators, Users, or both.

Click OK, and you’re good to go!

 

I received an email from Bjørn Furuknap today, and was delighted with what it contained. So I do not steal his thunder, give a read (link below) BEFORE you go installing the beta to save you some hassle.

http://furuknap.blogspot.com/2009/11/installing-sharepoint-2010-beta-2-how.html

** Updated 11.17.09 **

A reader of my blog, Arif, posted this morning in the comments, that it can definitely be done using local accounts – he was kind enough to share this link from the SharePoint From The Field Blog: http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blogs/fromthefield/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=112 Thanks Arif!

 

 

While I am in the process of creating a new virtual machine to host the new public beta of Office SharePoint Server 2010, I thought I would share a quick tip, regarding a toolset I use frequently. If you do any development work at all, or any sort of demonstration environment, you need to be aware of Scot Hillier’s SharePoint Development Environment Modifications project on CodePlex (http://www.codeplex.com/SPDevMod).

This is a collection of extremely useful tools for Visual Studio 2005 and 2008, some great STSADM extensions, and more. One of my favorite is mentioned in the subject of the post, and does exactly what it looks like. Taking the URL of a site collection, and warming it up. Useful after app pool recycles, IIS resets, etc., when everything is slow and sluggish as the JIT compiler loads up pages and gets them ready to go.

 

I think the above image speaks for itself. The public BETA of Office SharePoint Foundation Server 2010 (WSS) and Office SharePoint Server 2010 have been released today. Currently only to TechNet and MSDN subscribers. Thankfully, I fit in that group, and am downloading my copies now. I know what I am doing tonight!

Now that it is available, I am sure I will be belting out LOTS of posts on some of the new features!

 ** UPDATED 11.18.09 **

The public beta is now available through Microsoft’s SharePoint 2010 site here: http://sharepoint2010.microsoft.com/try-it/Pages/Trial.aspx

 

If you are in, or will be in the Washington DC area on December 5th, and are involved with SharePoint in any way, shape, or form, I highly suggest you do yourself a favor and sign up for SharePoint Saturday DC. And you better be quick about it, registration is limited to the first 200 signups!

Wondering what SharePoint Saturday is?

“Join SharePoint architects, developers, and other professionals that work with Microsoft SharePoint Technologies for ‘SharePoint Saturday’, on Saturday, Dec 5, 2009 at the Microsoft Technology Center on Sunset Hills Road Reston, VA.  SharePoint Saturday will be an educational, informative & lively day filled with sessions from respected SharePoint professionals & MVPs, covering a wide variety of SharePoint-orientated topics.  SharePoint Saturday is FREE, open to the public and is your local chance to immerse yourself in SharePoint!”

These are great events, where many respected names in the SharePoint community dedicate their Saturday to teach you more about SharePoint, on their own dime, to give back to the SharePoint community. There will be some sessions on SharePoint 2010 as well!

So, give a visit to http://www.sharepointsaturday.org/dc/ for more information and to register to attend this great event!

 

I recently had my Vista x86 system go belly up on me, which was actually perfect timing, with the public beta of SharePoint 2010 around the corner, I have a nice new HP ProBook 4710s with Dual Core Centrino x64 2.5GHz Processors, 8G of RAM, 500G SATA drive, 2G video memory, and other goodness.

Since the new laptop arrived yesterday however, I needed to hop back into some client work, which requires me to use the [cue eerie music] Cisco VPN client. I’ve had trouble with the Cisco VPN client on virtually every machine I have ever used. This was no different. There are numerous work-arounds for getting this to run, including using the XP Mode Virtual PC, uninstalling the NDIS drivers, installing the client, repairing the system, etc. And there are also a few 3rd Party VPN clients that are said to work as well.

My luck was with the Shrew Soft VPN Client. However, be warned, do NOT try to install any of the “STABLE” releases. My luck landed on the 2.1.5-rc-4 Development version, dated 10/1/09. [direct link: http://www.shrew.net/download/vpn/vpn-client-2.1.5-rc-4.exe]. The STABLE releases all BSOD’ed my laptop with various driver issues, one being the NDIS driver mentioned above.

Hope this helps someone out… I’ve been at this for hours now this morning.

 

Just a short update, I am still alive! It’s been (months?!?) now since my last post here, it’s been a very busy time. Lots of project work, the SharePoint Conference in Vegas, more project work, moving, a few computer crashes, new laptop, and other things…

Lots of GREAT information came out of the SharePoint conference, which I will start to blog about in the near future (especially once I get my hands on the public beta of 2010 when it arrives), more speaking engagements, and other goodness. So, thanks for staying tuned!

[re-posted from Amanda Murphy’s blog at: http://blog.funknstyle.com/?p=604]

Join us on Tuesday, August 18th at 8pm EST as we welcome a developer panel featuring Ed Musters, Geoff Varosky, Paul Schaeflein, Paul Stork and Rebecca Isserman. These guys will be there to answer your questions as well as provide some of their own guidance on topics such as getting started with web part development and the proper implementation of user controls. This event will be hosted by Laura Rogers.

As with all previous meetings, come join us no matter where you are in the world as this meeting will be delivered virtually via Live Meeting. In order to hear audio for the event, you will need to download the Live Meeting client.

Live Meeting Address:
https://www311.livemeeting.com/cc/mvp/webJoin?id=SPN05&role=attend

 

Yesterday it was announced on the SharePoint Saturday NYC site that registration for this free, one-day SharePoint conference will open on August 15th.

The speakers list was published to the site yesterday as well, and sessions will be posted to the site (35 of them!) before registration opens on the 15th. A schedule was also posted, which I will re-post here:

8:00 am - 8:45 am - Registration & Breakfast
8:45 am - 9:15 am – Welcome
9:30 am - 10:45 am – Sessions
11:00 am - 12:15 pm – Sessions
12:15 pm - 1:00 pm – Lunch
1:00 pm - 2:15 pm – Sessions
2:30 pm - 3:45 pm – Sessions
4:00 pm - 5:15 pm – Sessions
5:30 pm - 6:00 pm - Closing & Giveaways

This is going to be yet another great SharePoint Saturday event, so, register early to ensure your spot as an attendee for this conference on the 15th at http://www.sharepointsaturday.org/ny

 

I am excited to announce that I just heard from the coordinators of SharePoint Saturday NYC, Michael Lotter and Dux Raymond Sy, that I will be speaking at the upcoming SharePoint Saturday NYC event, taking place on September 12th, 2009.

An official speakers and session lists have not been released to the site as of yet, but already a great lineup is coming together from the looks of it on twitter (search for hashtag #spsnyc).

I will again be presenting my session “Introduction to Developing Custom Actions within SharePoint”, however a modified version based on prior feedback and time limitations from the Boston and Baltimore events.

For more information on the event, please visit the SharePoint Saturday NYC site. I will post registration details as soon as they are released. Hope to see everyone there!