Rehman Gul [MVP, MCTS SharePoint]

Some microsoft office sharepoint server errors and their fixes or workarounds. Hopefully these make a few lives easier….. Apologies for the crudeness of the writing, these are just coming straight from my personal ‘moss errors and their fixes’ database……with a very little or no editing at all……….

In order to go directly to the error/fix that you are looking for, press Cntrl+F, put your keywords in the ”Find” text box and press ”Next”… 

Error1:
Your backup is from a different version of Windows SharePoint Services and cannot be restored to a server running the current version. The backup file should be restored to a server with version ‘12.0.0.6318′ or later.

Fix:
Install Infrasturcture update for wss.
(if done check for infra update for moss). sp1 for both moss and wss.

Error2:
Configuration wizard Fails at the very end on 8th task.

Fix:
check upgrade log and most importantly event viewer. event viewer gives good info. My problem was resolved using event viewer. It told me that it was looking for assemblies in GAC which were deployed using solutions but could not be found. I had retracted the solution. So I redeployed and the assemblies were in place and configuration wizard ended successfully.

Error3:
Solution is not being deployed or retracted. It says scheduled but do nothing although you selected deploy NOW as the option.

Fix:
go to command prompt and run stsadm -o execadmsvcjobs, it will retract or deploy what ever was waiting and doing nothing.

Error5:
Create Hierarchies option for language variation doens’t work.

Fix:
Do not run variation simply logging into site using browser (may it be an administrator). You must be directly logged into the machine or should be using remote session like mstsc (Remote Desktop Connection).

Error6:
Content Type Mismatch error while running sharepoint language variations.

Fix:
First check if it is a default.aspx page or not. If default page, then it should fail since anything related with site definition like default page should not have custom content type for variation to run successfully. If it has a custom content type then you must provided custom site definition.

If it is not a default.aspx page then this should not stop variation from running since the page is not the part of the site definition.

Error7:
A broken kind of page is displayed with error message ‘An unexpected error has occured’.

Fix:
you might be typing an incorrect url e.g. instead of https://www.goodmanintl.com:9443/en, you might be typing https://www.goodman.com:9443/en i.e. intl is missing. This is when a site is extended from the other. Look for the difference of https and http.

Error8:
ssl site is not being restored.

Fix:
Always restore ssl on a non ssl web application. Then you can extend it to an ssl port. Experience says ssl sites are not restored on ssl web applications.

Error9:
Error in red on right hand top corner of Central Administration page saying “Server Farm Configuration Not Complete”.

Fix:
go to central admin->app mgmt->under Office Sharepoint Server Shared Services->click Check services enabled in this farm. Enable everything here. To enable search give full user name i.e. domain\username or machine\username.Then you also need to create SSP. then go again to check services enabled in this farm. One more task to enable search for ssp would appear. enable it and error will go.

Error10:
A broken kind of page is displayed with error message ‘File not found’.

Fix:
You may have just enabled SSL and trying to access your site using new https url but you forgot or havent set alternate access mapping for SSL url in Central Admin for your site. Go to Cental Admin and App Mgmt and Alternate Access Mapping. Edit public urls, select your web application and add the ssl url along with ssl port in any of the internet, extranet or custom boxes.

Error11:
The content was not being crawled. Error shown in crawl log was “SSL certificate sent by the server was invalid and this item will not be crawled”.

Fix:
Go to Central Administration->Application Mgmt->under Search->click Manage search service. On the page click “Farm-level search settings. On this page at the bottom fill the check box saying “Ignore SSL certificate name warnings”.

Error13:
Explorer view not working. My network place not working (creating new network place for a document library). IE->file->open->’open as a web’ folder not working. Upload multiple files not working. Open with windows explorer in document library not working. Edit in Datasheet view not working.

Fix:
Install office 2003. All started working instantly.

Error14:
Approve or publish in bulk. Approve publish items together in one go.

Fix:
Use Site Content and Structure. Select items together, cilck Actions and perform whatever you like.

Error15:
Search is not working.

Fix:
Make sure pages are published, approved and checked In (if you have made some changes to them and want to search based on those changes eg. properties), run incremental crawl and search!

Assuming that scopes are already created and they show crawled items in them (if using scopes).

Error16:
If images are not displayed on sharepoint site.

Fix:
Make sure images are checked In, Published and approved. (and ofcourse have permissions to access them).

Error17:
The site collection could not be restored. If this problem persists, please make sure the content databases are available and have sufficient free space.

Fix:
The error was due to the size problem of database. The sql server was not fully licensed version, like sql express or something. The site we were trying to restore was bigger than 4096 MB. And the error we caught from Event Viewer said:

 ”CREATE DATABASE or ALTER DATABASE failed because the resulting cumulative database size would exceed your licensed limit of 4096 MB per database.”

So our license did not allow creating databases larger than 4096 MBs.

Error18:
Steps if publishing infrastructure is not getting enabled (this may not be an error, jus the way to do it)

Fix:
go to iis and change the application pool of the web application to the one for Central Admin. Do iisreset. Go to the site and enable publishing infrastructure feature. Go back to iis and change app pool back to the original and iisreset.

Error20:
Exception from HRESULT: 0×80040E14

Fix:
It means the SQL server has run out of space for either the logs or the data file. Simply delete some un-needed files from the Hard Disk Drive that the SQL server is writting to and it fixes the problem.

Error21:
Code Block are not allowed in this file

Fix:
If you want to add some inline code in a masterpage or pagelayout file… you probably get the following error message:

An error occurred during the processing of abcd.aspx. Code blocks are not allowed in this file.

To get this working you need to modify the web.config of your web application. For instance, if you want to allow server side script on pages from the masterpage & pagelayout gallery you have to modify the PageParserPaths into:

<.pageparserpaths>
<.pageparserpath virtualpath=”/_catalogs/masterpage/*” compilationmode=”Always” allowserversidescript=”true” includesubfolders=”true”.>
<./pageparserpaths>

Error22:
To find out version of SharePoint:

Fix:
Go to Site Settings, it is displayed on that page. You can also go to control panel, select MS Office Sharepoint Server, and click “Click here for support information” on it, this will also show you the version number, but note this could be the old one……in site settings the latest version is displayed…like the updated version after infra update.

Error23:
SSP gives error:

The following error occurred while querying database ‘SharedServices1_Search_DB’ on server ’sydsrvprod0003\sql2005′: (4060) Cannot open database “SharedServices1_Search_DB” requested by the login. The login failed. Login failed for user ‘SYDNEY\mossadmin_49′.

Fix:
Use a different databse name…sql server could be shared and same database name may already exist there and your login obviously do not have rights on it.

Error24:
“I need to” web part generates following error when put on a master page:

Error “Value cannot be null. Parameter name: webNode” occured processing your request. Review the error message and correct the problem….

Fix:
Site Directory is not created for the web part. Site Directory has a list named “Sites” which is used by “I need to” web part which is not available to the web part. Create site directory and the error should disappear….

Error25:
Configuration wizard failed with “system error code 122″ and then with “system error code 997″. “Error during encryption or decryption”.

Fix25 (Click Here):

Error26:
Title field is set as required in one of the Content Types used in a doc lib. However, when you open the document in Office and save it without providing any value for Title field, the document is saved, then Office will ask if you want to “check in” the doc, you will say Yes and select Major Version: At this point you receive an error message saying:

“Cannot perform this opertation. The file is no longer checked out or has been deleted.”

OR

“This file could not be checked in because the original version of the file on the server was moved or deleted. A new version of this file has been saved to the server, but your check-in comments were not saved………To save comments with the new version of this file on the server, you must delete the local copy of this file, check out the file from the server again, and then check in the file with any comments you want to add.”

Fix26 (Click Here):

Error27:
A link was provided in the site that pointed to something. This link had “/_layouts/….” in it. So there was something under “/_layouts/…..” it was pointing to. Users received IE errors saying: “the Website declined to show this web page…….the website requires you to log in.”

Fix27 (more or less (Click Here):

Error28:
Sharepoint generates an error message that you “cannot create the database” while creating a new web application.

Fix:
Even if you are a DBO, you do not have rights to CREATE a new database. Get dbcreator rights on SQL Server and you should be good to go (at server level……Server Roles->dbcreator). Remember, these rights should be granted for the user account being used to create the web application (i.e. the current windows user and not the service account………assuming that you will be authenticated against your windows account on the SQL Server).

A DBO has full permissions on his own database, but creating a new database is a server level task and needs server level permissions.