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Larry Kuhn

Larry Kuhn
  

The Blue Monster

 Midwest Bloggers

  Arbindo Chattopadhyay
  U.S. Midwest SharePoint Community
  Ram Gopinathan
  Larry Clarkin
  Kevin Hammond
  Dave Bost
  Angela Binkowski
  Andrew Ehrensing
  John West

 User Groups

  Chicago SharePoint User Group
  Chicago .NET Users Group
  Chicago Windows User Group
  Chicago Visual Studio Team System User Group
An occasional list of stuff
Try out Office Web Apps now
Earlier this week the Technical Preview of Office Web Applications was turned on within Skydrive.
If you're not familiar with Skydrive, it's the cloud stroage offering of Windows Live.  Just browse over to http://skydrive.live.com, log in with your Windows Live ID account, navigate into one of your folders, and at the top of the window you will be presented with a link to click on to participate in the Office Web Applications Technical Preview.
Once you click on that link, and accept the terms of service, from that point on you will see a "New" menu within your Skydrive folders, where you can choose to create new Word, Excel, PowerPoint or OneNote files.  Here's a screenshot of the in-browser editing experience for a PowerPoint:
Office Web PowerPoint 2010 in SkyDrive
Really slick!  Kudos to the Office and Windows Live teams!
SharePoint Search Content Source start address in use problem

Problem

Add Content Source page returns error: "The start address <url> already exists in this or another content source" when trying to add a new content source, even though <url> is not seen in any other content source.

 

Cause

A “SharePoint” content source pointing to Server name portion of the <url> was in the past created and then subsequently deleted from the content source configuration.  For some unknown reason, a portion of the “SharePoint” content source has become orphaned in the registry.  It is no longer is visible in the UI, but the orphaned registry entries are still seen by the Add Content Source validation logic.

 

Resolution

On the Index server, locate and remove the portion of the orphaned registry subtree pertaining to the previously deleted SharePoint content source.  Identify the offending orphan subtree though visual inspection of the “Path” keys under the following key:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office Server\12.0\Search\Applications\<SSPGUID>\Gather\Portal_Content\Sites\*]

After the orphaned keys have been removed, recycle the Office SharePoint Server Search service (osearch) on the Index server.  (Note: the mentioned keys only exist on the Index server.) After it comes back you should be able to add content sources again.

 

Incidentally, I have found though experimentation that even if the “SharePoint” content source was not orphaned, but was still present and intact, you cannot add a “Web Site” content source which specifies as start address anywhere below/within the SharePoint content source.  For example, if you create a SharePoint content source with a start address of:

                http://www.sharepoint.com/sites/site1

 

you will not be able to add any “Web Site” content sources of the form:

                http://www.sharepoint.com/* (e.g. http://www.sharepoint.com/sites/site2  or http://www.sharepoint.com/somestaticHTMLsite )

 

I don’t know if this is by design or a bug. If I wanted to index some static web site that I just so happened to host on the same server as SharePoint sites, I would consider this a bug.  The moral of the story is you don’t seem to be able to mix “SharePoint” and “Web Site” content sources that refer to the same server url.

SharePoint Performance and Load Testing resources
This is a great post that nicely summarizes and links to a wealth of useful information on this topic:
 
 
Live Maps are now Bing Maps
As part of recent search product rebranding and relaunch that changed Live Search over to Bing, so too has Live Maps changed over to Bing Maps.  But it seems that, as with the rest of the search capabilities, much more has happened with Maps than just a name change.  Loads and loads of new aerial imagery has been loaded up. And there is a guided tour application that will zoom you around the planet to show it off to you.  Check out the Bing Maps World Tour right here: http://bingmapsupdates.cloudapp.net/  This tour application is especially helpful in getting you out into vast Pacific ocean area to visit atolls and islands - very cool.  Be sure to roll your mouse up to the top of the window so that the menu drops down to allow you to jump to points of interest.
 
Note that the tour app requires Silverlight - a quick painless automatic install if you don't have it already...
Enjoy.
Visio Stencils for SharePoint architecture diagrams
Note to self, for the next time I'm looking for these:
 

Technical diagrams and other supplemental documentation

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263199.aspx

New series of posts about Preupgrade checker has started
Keep an eye on Jie Li's GeekWorld for details about the pre-upgrade checker that I previously mentioned in this post: WSS 4.0 Details Emerge via KB articles
 
The first installment is here:
 
Net-net: The future belongs to x64 - if you've still got 32-bit processors on your development workstations or servers it's time to go shopping!  Think of it as Microsoft's contribution to economic stimulus.
See, you were right - you weren't going insane...
Those mysterious glitches were not figments of your imagination or due to a solar flare randomly flipping bits in your SharePoint database... they were bugs.
 
Check the lists of which ones were fixed, and then sleep well knowing that your sanity is intact.
 
 
I for one happen to recognize several of these as tormentors of mine.  Hopefully they were exterminated before they could lay eggs.
Where do shortcuts in “My Network Places” come from?

Today my customer presented me with this simple question.  They had a whole bunch of shortcuts in their “My Network Places” folder but they hadn’t created them.  The shortcuts were being created automatically somehow, but just what action was trigging this behavior was not obvious.

After a quick bit of investigation, I found the following article which is a bit dated, but which describes this automatic shortcut creation behavior: http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/win2k_980918.asp

 

After a little more digging, I found references to the “NoRecentDocsNetHood” registry value in this KB article: Policy settings for the Start menu in Windows XP (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/292504) which states:

Policy:Do not add shares of recently used documents to Network Places

Description:Remote shared folders are not added to Network Places whenever

you open a document in the shared folder.

Registry Value:"NoRecentDocsNetHood"

 

Armed with the above clues and context, I conducted some experiments accessing files stored in remote shared folders. Note that all of the results I document here were observed on a Windows XP SP2 client machine with Office 2007 SP2 installed.  Here is what I observed: A shortcut gets created when you directly open any file via a UNC folder view.  The specific steps are as follows:

a.       Navigate to the UNC path of a site’s document library:

b.      Start, Run, enter the folder UNC path (e.g.: "\\<someserver>\<somefileshare>\<somefolder>\<somenestedfolder>")

c.       Double-click on a file to open it in the application associated with the file type.

d.      A shortcut pointing to the UNC path of the file share is created.  (In other words, the UNC path will be \\<someserver>\<somefileshare>

 

Incidentally, further experimentation showed that if you happen to manually delete the automatically created shortcut while the application is still open, you will find that it will be automatically recreated if you invoke “Save As…” and save a new file in the same location as the original.  The interaction with the “Save As…” dialog box will become more important later…

 

The customer’s situation was a bit different though – the users in this case were not directly navigating to the paths in Windows Explorer.  And the automatically created shortcuts did not point to UNC paths, but rather to URL paths pointing to document libraries throughout various SharePoint sites they had access too.  But there was no rhyme or reason as to which sites had short cuts and which did not.  And in some cases there were multiple shortcuts pointing to the different locations within the same SharePoint site.  So, back to more experiments…

 

Automatic addition of SharePoint document library shortcuts to “My Network Places”

Based on my observations, here are the activities that trigger SharePoint document library shortcuts to automatically be added to “My Network Places” are as follows:

1.          Invoke “Save As…” on an Office document type that was opened directly from a SharePoint document library. The specific steps are as follows:  (note: you do not need to actually save a file – the shortcut gets created at the point when the “Save As…” dialog opens.)

a.       Navigate to a SharePoint site’s document library: http://<somewebapp>/sites/<somestie>/Shared%20Documents

b.      Click on the name of a Word, Excel or PowerPoint document to open it.

c.       Click on the Office menu, choose “Save As…”

d.      A shortcut pointing to the HTTP: path of the document library is created.

2.          Invoke “Save As…” and save a non-Office document that was opened directly from a SharePoint document library.  The specific steps are as follows: (note: in this case, you must actually save a new file before the shortcut gets created.)

a.       Navigate to a SharePoint site’s document library: http://<somewebapp>/sites/<somestie>/Shared%20Documents

b.      Click on the name of a text file to open for edit in Notepad.

c.       Click on File, Save As…, and save a new file in the same location as the original.

d.      A shortcut pointing to the UNC path of the site root location of the site of the document library is created.  (In other words, the UNC path will be “\\<somewebapp>\sites” - which is a mostly useless shortcut because no user should have permission to store or see anything at this location.)

3.          When you directly open a non-Office file via a UNC folder view.  The specific steps are as follows:

a.       Navigate to the UNC path of a site’s document library:  Start > Run > enter the folder UNC path (e.g.: "\\<somewebapp>\sites\<somesite>\Shared Documents")

b.       Double-click on a text file to open it in Notepad.

c.      A shortcut pointing to the UNC path of the site root location of the site of the document library is created.  (In other words, the UNC path will be “\\<somewebapp>\sites” - this is a useless shortcut in most cases, btw, because most users would not have permission to store or see anything at this location.)

 

As you can see – things are different when Office client applications are involved.  I believe that the underlying reason is because they kick over to use WebDav for interactions with SharePoint so long ast the WebClient service is running on the client workstation.

 

Hopefully this information will be helpful for some folks out there.

SharePoint Index Server Local Crawling affected by MS09-014 - KB 963027
Many customers I know have taken advantage of the "Index Server Local Crawling" tip that was published a long while ago by Joel Oleson over here: http://blogs.msdn.com/joelo/archive/2007/02/06/use-a-dedicated-web-front-end-for-crawling.aspx
 
Recently, Microsoft released "MS09-014: Cumulative security update for Internet Explorer" which, among other things, closed a vulnerability in NTLM authentication. Details of the security update are listed here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/963027
 
Basically, there was a potential “man in the middle” security issue with NTLM authentication that has been mitigated by implementing the following behavior:  If you’re browsing to your own machine, and the URL you’re browsing to doesn’t match the machine name, then NTLM authentication will fail.
 
After applying this security update to SharePoint servers, crawls that are configured to use the Local Crawling approach and that use the FQDN as the start address of the crawl will begin to encounter HTTP 401 errors during the local crawl.
 
The NTLM authentication change was also included in .NET Framework 3.5 SP1, and is described in http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc982052.aspx
The solution is straightforward, and is documented both in the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 article I just mentioned and in http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896861. Note that Method 1 is the preferred option to fix it.
 
Thanks to many colleagues who helped pull together the details here. Hopefully info this will save some folks some headaches.
SPDisposeCheck has been released.

I just found out that SPDisposecheck was finally released on MSDN Code gallery for public use yesterday.  If you write custom code against the SharePoint APIs (custom web parts, timer jobs, event handlers, etc.) you need to use this tool.  It will help you avoid coding pitfalls that can cause resource  leaks which lead to system instabilty.

 

http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/SPDisposeCheck

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 Error

Web Part Error: A Web Part or Web Form Control on this Page cannot be displayed or imported. The type could not be found or it is not registered as safe.

Error Details:
[UnsafeControlException: A Web Part or Web Form Control on this Page cannot be displayed or imported. The type could not be found or it is not registered as safe.]
  at Microsoft.SharePoint.ApplicationRuntime.SafeControls.GetTypeFromGuid(Guid guid)
  at Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.SPWebPartManager.CreateWebPartsFromRowSetData(Boolean onlyInitializeClosedWebParts)

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 SharePoint Internet Sites (from WSSDemo.com)

  Recovery.gov website hosted on SharePoint
  College of the Desert website built on SharePoint
  Lancaster-Lebanon Intermediate Unit website built on SharePoint
  Washington State Department of Personnel website built on SharePoint
  Kraft Corporate website built on SharePoint
  Gevalia website built on SharePoint
  Moulinex website built on SharePoint
  SSAS Made Easy website built on SharePoint
  Granite School District
  ERIS@ website built on SharePoint
  Spenta Consulting website built on SharePoint
  ESRO website built on SharePoint
  Sacramento City Unified School District website built on SharePoint
  Daemen College website built on SharePoint
  KiZAN website built on SharePoint
  Community Kit For SharePoint website built on SharePoint
  Yakima Valley Community College site built on SharePoint
  Synopsys website built on SharePoint
  Saint Francis Hospital Memphis site built on SharePoint
  Croydon High School site built on SharePoint
  Council of Landscape Architectural Registration Boards site built on SharePoint
  De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek site built on SharePoint
  Milliken Walk Off® Mats website built on SharePoint
  The Manukau Libraries website built on SharePoint
  PIMCO ETFs site built on SharePoint
  Municipality of Anchorage site built on SharePoint
  Stanford Anesthesia Department site built on SharePoint
  Virginia Beach Parents site built on SharePoint
  Ministry of Industry Thailand site built on SharePoint
  Bank of Thailand site built on SharePoint
  Bangkok Bank site built on SharePoint
  New Zealand Fire Service site built on SharePoint
  Environment Canterbury site built on SharePoint
  Irwin Mitchell law firm site based on SharePoint
  Colorado State University-Pueblo
  PromoCaixa S.A.
  Bank of New York Mellon
  M&T Bank Corporation site built on SharePoint
  Standard Chartered Bank Global Research site built on SharePoint
  Frost Bank site built on SharePoint
  Cultura Online site built on SharePoint
  West Virginia's Economic Recovery Portal built on SharePoint
  Washington State Auditor's Office
  Damco site built on SharePoint
  EPCOR Utilities site built on SharePoint
  Cardo site built on SharePoint
  phion site built on SharePoint
  Arab Banking Corporation site built on SharePoint
  Brandes Investment Partners site built on SharePoint
  CFA Society of Minnesota site built on SharePoint
  Heelys site built on SharePoint
  University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus site built on SharePoint
  Small Business Roundtable site built on SharePoint
  cardcall NZ site built on SharePoint
  Camako site built on SharePoint
  Long Term Records Management research site built on SharePoint
  AgStar Financial Services site built on SharePoint
  Centre for Employability Enterprise and Careers site built on SharePoint
  Legal Aid Alberta site built on SharePoint
  Arkansas Works site built on SharePoint
  University Hospital of South Manchester site built on SharePoint
  Source4 site built on SharePoint
  Technicolor site built on SharePoint
  Qurrent site hosted on WSS
  Markel American Insurance Company site built on SharePoint
  Republic Mortgage Insurance Company site built on SharePoint
  Pervasive Software site built on SharePoint
  Council of Ministers of Education site built on SharePoint
  The gotalk group site built on SharePoint
  Betco site built on SharePoint
  Facilicom Services Group site built on SharePoint
  Silent Tools site built on SharePoint
  Popcorn Technologies site built on SharePoint
  Crawford site built on SharePoint
  Unified Grocers site built on SharePoint
  Lender Processing Services site built on SharePoint
  Microsoft Education Labs site built on SharePoint
  My Life My Club site built on SharePoint
  Reval site built on SharePoint
  Cathy Breshears site built on SharePoint
  SSL International site built on SharePoint
  Case IH site built on SharePoint
  Durex site built on SharePoint
  Pacific West Financial Group site built on SharePoint
  Becon Construction Company site built on SharePoint
  Ohio Department of Insurance site built on SharePoint
  Commonwealth of Learning site built on SharePoint
  Project Performance Corporation site built on SharePoint
  Public Works Authority (ASHGHAL) site built on SharePoint
  Kryptonite site built on SharePoint
  Western States Cat site built on SharePoint
  National Société Générale Bank site built on SharePoint
  Worcester College of Technology site built on SharePoint
  British Army Jobs site built on SharePoint
  Henkels & McCoy site built on SharePoint
  TechSoup site built on SharePoint
  OSUCCC - James site built on SharePoint
  Absa Capital site built on SharePoint
  Corby Borough Council site built on SharePoint
  ISMIE Mutual
  Lee Hecht Harrison site built on SharePoint
  Dubai Eye 103.8 site built on SharePoint
  Virgin Radio 104.4 site built on SharePoint
  Frisco Parks & Recreation Department
  Intertape Polymer Group site built on SharePoint
  The Girls' Day School Trust site built on SharePoint
  Baylor Health Care System site built on SharePoint
  University of Gloucestershire site built on SharePoint
  Advanced Distributed Learning site built on SharePoint
  Illinois State Medical Society site built on SharePoint
  World-Check site built on SharePoint
  The County Fire Office Limburg-Noord site built on SharePoint
  VON Canada - Community Caregiver Connect
  Ontario Hospital Association site built on SharePoint
  Human Resources Professionals Association
  Fertin Pharma site built on SharePoint
  Manukau City Council site built on SharePoint
  Microsoft Surface QuickStart site built on SharePoint
  Mount Diablo Unified School District site built on SharePoint
  Advantage Sales and Marketing site built on SharePoint
  Robert Morris University site hosted on SharePoint
  Queens College site built on SharePoint
  Dubai 92 Radio Station site built on SharePoint
  DONG Energy site built on SharePoint
  Guarantee Trust Life Insurance Company site built on SharePoint
  Arab MTV site built on SharePoint
  Ontario-Montclair School District site built on SharePoint
  Park Plaza Hospital site built on SharePoint
  WV State Fire Commission site built on SharePoint
  But What if I Live? site built on SharePoint
  Parsons Corporation site built on SharePoint
  Tacoma Public Schools site built on SharePoint
  City of Salem Council site built on SharePoint
  The Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education site built on SharePoint
  Boys Town
  The American Board for Certification in Orthotics, Prosthetics and Pedorthics site built on SharePoint
  Owens & Minor site built on SharePoint
  ISC Software Solutions site built on SharePoint
  Microsoft Productivity Hub Site for SharePoint
  Evergreen Public Schools site built on SharePoint
  Santiago Canyon College site built on SharePoint
  BankMed site built on SharePoint
  CENTRIA site built on SharePoint
  Building Services Authority site built on SharePoint
  National Association for Campus Activities
  Emirates Business 24|7 site built on SharePoint
  Arab Media Group site built on SharePoint
  Southeast Technical Institute site built on SharePoint
  Polk County Sheriff’s Office site built on SharePoint
  Emergency Nurses Association (ENA) site built on SharePoint
  Chandler-Gilbert Community College site built on SharePoint
  The Army National Guard (ARNG) site built on SharePoint
  The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers site built on SharePoint
  Content and Code site built on SharePoint
  Edexcel site built on SharePoint
  Nanyang Technological University
  Williams Lea site built on SharePoint
  Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow site built on SharePoint
  Woodland Trust site built on SharePoint
  Perth College site built on SharePoint
  NHS Lanarkshire site built on SharePoint
  Business Mentoring site built on SharePoint
  The Little Gym site built on SharePoint
  Kuwait Oil Company site built on SharePoint
  Alberta Securities Commission
  Agilent Life Sciences and Chemical Analysis site built on SharePoint
  American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy site built on SharePoint
  EduCoMS site built on SharePoint
  Hit 96.7 FM site built on SharePoint
  Playing for Success site built on SharePoint
  The Saudi Postal Corporation site built on SharePoint
  Small Enterprise Education and Promotion site built on SharePoint
  SWS Group site built on SharePoint
  MedApps site built on SharePoinht
  Rockdale City Council site built on SharePoint
  Maryland State Government site built on SharePoint
  Collins Education site built on SharePoint
  Revera site built on SharePoint
  Devon and Cornwall Police site built on SharePoint
  IUOE - Local 150 site built on SharePoint
  Chesapeake Cytometry Consortium site built on SharePoint
  ACT-IAC site built on SharePoint
  Southwestern Energy Company site built on SharePoint
  Spine Breakers site built on SharePoint
  Kinetics Group site built on SharePoint
  Pearson Language Tests site built on SharePoint
  The Opus Group site built on SharePoint
  Woninginrichting-Kijkenkiezen site built on SharePoint
  GaDOE Georgia Standards site built on SharePoint
  International Bancshares Corporation site built on SharePoint
  Oakwood Systems site built on SharePoint
  The Center for Social Development site built on SharePoint
  College of Business, Southern Illinois University site built on SharePoint
  Hitachi IT Operations Analyzer site built on SharePoint
  Praxa site built on SharePoint
  Protiviti
  Financial Center Credit Union site built on SharePoint
  AD Self-Service SharePoint demo site built on SharePoint
  PFK Chartered Accountants site built on SharePoint
  Water Services Association of Australia (WSAA) site built on SharePoint