Alexander’s Blog

Microsoft has several products that are generating good revenue for their business. Mary Jo Foley recently published this article that has more details. Most of the heavy hitters are big names but SharePoint definitely stands out.

There are over dozens products in this select group that generate over a $1 billion a year in sales for Microsoft, including the following products listed in alphabetical order.

1.  Azure
2.  Developer Tools
3.  Dynamics (ERP & CRM)
4.  Office
5.  Online display and search advertising.
6.  SharePoint (crossed the $2 billion mark in 2012)
7.  SQL Server
8.  System Center
9.  Unified Communications
10. Windows
11. Xbox

SharePoint is supposedly the only product that have crossed the $2 billion mark. If I am not mistaken, SharePoint was also the first product to cross the $1 billion in sales. You can bet all the tea in China that Office365 will be added to this list shortly.

For more information on this topic, check out Mary Jo Foley’s article. She also has some other interesting stuff in her article.

Here’s a scenario that several people have run into, both on Windows 7 and Windows 8. Hopefully the following solution will help.

PROBLEM

On your Windows 7 or Windows 8 computer you go to Control -> Network and Internet -> Network and Sharing Center -> Change advanced sharing settings. You expand the private section by clicking on the down arrow. You check the box “Turn on network discovery” and then save the changes. You assume the changes are saved but if you go back to verify, the settings are reverted back and the network discovery is turned off.

SOLUTION

1. Ensure the following services are running and are configured to start automatically in the services Console (services.msc):

• - Computer Browser
• - DHCP Client
• - DNS Client
• - Network Connections
• - Network Location Awareness
• - Remote Procedure Call (RPC)
• - Server
• - TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper
• - Workstation

2. If you are still having problems, repeat the above steps for SSDP Discovery and UPnP Device Host services to ensure they are running and configured to start automatically.

You should now be able to turn on network discovery for your Private network. For security reasons, do not turn on network discovery for Public networks. After you save the changes, go back and verify that it stays turned on. There is no need to reboot your computer after you start the above services but in some cases you may have to turn your firewall on first, make the above changes and then start the firewall if necessary.

When working with Windows computers, especially Windows servers, I often run into situations where the hard drive is running out of disk space. In fact, I have often seen drives literally have no available space on a SharePoint or SQL server. There are too many reasons why a drive can run out of space, or continue to run out of space even if you keep freeing more disk space. In this article I won’t be going into the details of the reasons why drives run out of space but I can tell you that trace logs, SharePoint_Config_log.ldf file on SharePoint 2010, and cache files in %windir%\winsxs\ManifestCache folder on the server and PST files, temporary files, and thumbnails, eating up the disk on the workstation are a few common reasons. I have also blogged about other reasons in the past. The purpose of this article is to show you how to find out the size of some of the largest files on your computer so you can take action and delete them if they are not needed.

Not all large files are needed. If they are not needed then there is no sense in keeping them on your computer. Obviously, you can delete a lot of small junk files but The question is how to find out which are the largest files. A simple way to find out the size of the largest files is to write a PowerShell script. You can then pipe the results of the script to a file and look at them one by one. Here’s a sample script that will display in GB the 5 largest files on your server or workstation. You can change the number 5 at the end of the script to display more or fewer large files.

@echo off
Powershell -noexit “Get-PSdrive  | where { $_.Used -gt 0 } | foreach { Get-ChildItem $_.Root -recurse -force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | Select Name,DirectoryName, @{Label=’Size’;Expression={($_.Length/1GB).ToString(‘F04′)}} | Sort Size -descending | select -first 5}”

1. Paste the above script in Notepad.
2. Save the file as a batch file (File, Save As, change “Save as type” to All files, click Save). Give it a name like Top5largestFiles.bat. Make sure you use the .bat extension, otherwise it will not execute as batch file.
3. Start the Command Prompt as an Administrator.
4. Go to the folder where you saved the batch file.
5. Type the name of the batch file (e.g. Top5largestFiles). It’s optional to type the .bat at the end of a batch file because the system automatically knows that it’s an executable file.
6. Wait a while because the batch file needs to go through every file on your computer. The results will be displayed in GB.
7. You can also pipe the results into a text file if for some reason you want to save the results as a reference for future use. For example, type
   5ToplargestFiles > largefiles.txt
   This will send the results into a text file called largestfiles.txt.
8. Once you know which files are the largest files you can go through them and see if some of them can be deleted. Obviously, you have to have certain level of knowledge to understand which files are safe to delete.

As an example, on a SQL Server 2008 R2 if you run out of disk space, you can delete the file that ends with _blobs.bin (e.g. a368b368b28d9265_blobs.bin) in the %windir%\winsxs\ManifestCache folder. According to Microsoft, this file is used by Windows Update mechanism and it is safe to delete this file. However, do not delete or mess with any other files in the WinSxS foder. Even if you delete all the files in the ManifestCache folder, they may appear later after a Windows Update or a reboot but will likely be not as large. Just keep an eye on these files and deleted them when necessary. Here a post from Joseph Conway on TechNet that describes in detail what the WinSxS folder is all about. Unfortunately, there is no known solution to this problem of Windows servers and workstations running out of disk space. Until Microsoft comes up with a solution, here’s a workaround.

Here’s how you can delete files in the Windows\WinSxS\ManifestCache folder.

1. Run the above batch file to find out the top 5 largest files.
2. If the files in the ManifestCache folder are among the largest files then use the following commands.
3. Run Command Prompt as an Administrator.
4. Run the command “net stop trustedinstaller” without the quotes to stop the Windows Modules Installer service. If your OS is running this service then make sure you wait for it to stop, if it’s not running and you get the message “The Windows Modules Installer service is not started” then go to the next step.
5. Type EXIT to get out of the PowerShell command and run the command “takeown /f %windir%\winsxs\ManifestCache\*” without the quotes at the Command Prompt to take the ownership of the folder. This step is necessary because you must take ownership of the folder before giving the Administrators proper permission.
6. If you get an error it’s likely because you ignored the first part of the previous step and ran the command inside PowerShell (if your prompt starts with PS then you are in the PowerShell command). If you run the command in PowerShell you will get the message “ERROR: The system cannot find the path specified.”
7. Run the command “Icacls %windir%\winsxs\ManifestCache\* /grant Administrators:f” without the quotes to grant Administrators Full Access permissions to the folder.
8. The last step is to delete the files in the ManifestCache folder. Run the command “del /q %windir%\winsxs\ManifestCache\*” without the quotes.
9. Restart the Windows Modules Installer service by typing “net start trustedinstaller” without the quotes.

Scheduling Cleanup of ManifestCache folder

The ManifestCache folder will continue to grow in the future but you can create a batch file to cleanup the content occasionally. I would recommend that you clean up the folder only if you need disk space because the cache files will improve performance. This solution is for people who are in desperate need of additional disk space. Here’ a batch file that I use on my SharePoint 2010 server and my SQL Server 2008 R2 server. I saved the content of this batch file in Notepad and named the file CleanManifestFolder.bat. I run this file at the elevated Command Prompt.

@echo off
cls
net stop trustedinstaller
takeown /f %windir%\winsxs\ManifestCache\*
Icacls %windir%\winsxs\ManifestCache\* /grant Administrators:f
del /q %windir%\winsxs\ManifestCache\*
net start trustedinstaller

You can also schedule to run this file with Task Scheduler if necessary.

Disk Cleanup Tool

At this point you may want to go through additional files and delete them if they are safer to delete. On some operating systems, such as Windows 7, you also have the option Disk Cleanup on the drive properties. However, this tool is designed to delete only certain types of files that are safe to delete, such as downloaded program files, temporary Internet files, setup log files, temporary files, thumbnails, etc. It won’t find other files that can be very large and often useless. I still encourage you to go through these and delete them. Especially, the temporary files and thumbnails. I noticed that on my PC, the thumbnails were 79MB but the temporary files were a whopping 13.7GB. Your mileage may vary but the results may surprise you.

A few years ago I wrote this article Deleting Old User Profiles in Windows 2000/XP/2003 about a User Profile Deletion utility called DelProf.exe. This tool is part of the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit. Because it was written for older operating systems it won’t work on Windows Vista or later operating systems.

Lucky for us, Microsoft MVP Helge Klein has written a successor utility called DelProf2 that works with newer operating systems, such as Windows 7. DelProf2 works with Windows XP/2003/Vista/Windows 7/Windows 2008/Windows 2008R2.

DelProf2 will even handle profiles that use long paths (i.e. MAX_PATH values of longer than 260). This tool is great if you want to get rid of old profiles that are taking disk space. It will delete all profiles except the current profile. It will leave the necessary system profiles (e.g. Default profile) alone. Default profile is used by the operating system to create a profile for a new user by making a copy of the Default profile. You also have the option to delete locally cached copies of roaming profiles or delete older profiles that have not been used for a certain period of time, such as older than 90 days.

Here is the syntax used by DelProf2.

Usage: delprof2 [/u] [/q] [/i] [/p] [/r] [/c:[\\]<computername>] [/d:<days>]

       /u   Unattended (no confirmation)
       /q   Quiet (no output and no confirmation)
       /i   Ignore errors, continue deleting
       /p   Prompt for confirmation before deleting each profile
       /r   Delete local caches of roaming profiles only, not local profiles
       /c   Delete on remote computer instead of local machine
       /d   Delete only profiles not used in x days
       /l   List only, do not delete (what-if mode)

Helge has some nice examples on his site. You can use DelProf2 to delete inactive profiles remotely (including Windows 7 computers) using their IP addresses.

DelProf2 is a free utility that can be downloaded from Helge’s Web site here. While you are at it, you might want to check out some additional tools that he has written.

If you are having problems installing Service Pack or software updates on Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows 7 or Windows Vista you are not alone. There are lots of people facing the same issue, including me, and hopefully this article will be helpful in understanding and solving the problem. I should point out that I have encountered this problem of installing Service Pack 1 (SP1) on numerous servers (all new installation) as well as existing Windows 7 client. The focus of this article is on Windows Server 2008 R2 but you can apply the same techniques on Windows 7 and Windows Vista.

It took me three full days to find a solution that worked for me. Needless to say I was searching the Web all this time and trying various solutions but some worked and others didn’t. Unlike the old Windows NT days when the patches were considered a risky business, for the past decade or so Microsoft has done a great job to make the updates and security patches fairly reliable. It’s a daunting task to deal with a gazillion updates on various systems and gain the confidence of consumers. Microsoft gained enough of my confidence that I have been configuring all my computers, including servers, to download and install the Windows Update automatically. Even though I have occasionally encountered a few crashes, overall I have been fairly satisfied with the automatic Windows Update service. Well, lately things have not been so rosy. Windows Updates are causing more problems more frequently and therefore starting this year I decided to manually update my computers because of the fear of system crashes and other unexpected results. Microsoft has confirmed my fears of Windows Update by releasing a patch to fix the patches. The patch is called Windows System Update Readiness Tool, essentially a bug fix that fixes other bug fixes. But these days vendors don’t use the term bugs any more because that is admitting that there was a problem with the software in the first place. Instead they refer to them as “patches”, “updates”, “repairs”, “fixes”, and now there is a new term “tool.” Well, you tell me which one sounds better Windows System Update Readiness Tool or Windows Update Bug Fix? Exactly my point!

Microsoft is aware that even the Windows System Update Readiness Tool may not fix the Windows Update problems with Windows Server 2008 R2 and therefore they have posted an article on TechNet for advanced diagnosing and fixing servicing corruption. The article is listed under the Troubleshooting section as Known Issues with Windows Server 2008 R2. So now we know that Microsoft is aware of this issue and have released a bug fix for the bug fixes and also admitted that the bug fix for the bug fixes may not work and therefore we may need to rely on some advance diagnostics to fix the problems with the corruption in Windows servicing store (more on this servicing store in a minute).

Let’s get back to the problem of installing SP1. As I indicated earlier, lately I have been having lots of issues with installing Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 on several servers. As far as I recall, I have experienced this issue mostly on new server installations. The problem is that the service pack hangs after a minute or so and the installation fails. After spending a lot of time I finally narrowed the problem down to one particular update (KB2620704). I installed all the updates on my new servers (92 to be exact) and then installed KB2620704 that was causing problems. On some servers KB2620704 failed while on others I was able to install it successfully. However, even after I was able to install all the updates, including KB2620704, I still wasn’t able to install SP1. In addition, I was not able to install SharePoint Server 2010 on one of the servers because when I tried to install the software prerequisites it failed.

At one point Windows Update offered me a new update called System Update Readiness Tool for Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 Edition (KB 947821) [August 2011].

According to Microsoft:

“This tool is being offered because an inconsistency was found in the Windows servicing store which may prevent the successful installation of future updates, service packs, and software. This tool checks your computer for such inconsistencies and tries to resolve issues if found.”

In case you are wondering about the Windows Servicing Store, it’s a component that is required to successfully install the service packs.

There is something very interesting in the above screenshot. Notice that the last update on the list Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 x64 Edition (KB976932) is only 13.6MB. If you download SP1 from Microsoft here, the size is 903.2MB. The interesting part was that I was working on several newly installed servers and only one of them showed SP1 as 13.6MB. All the other servers listed KB976932 as 95.5MB – 892.6MB, as shown in the screenshot below.

After installing KB947821 I was still not able to installSP1. I went to the SUR log to see what’s going on. See this article for more information.

%windir%\logs\cbs\checksur.log

I noticed the log pointed to the KB2620704 which I knew was a problem right from the start. On the server where I was able to install KB2620704 everything was fine but on the server where I wasn’t able to install SP1 I knew I had to install KB2620704. I was left with only 2 updates (KB2620704 & the SP1 update KB976932) so I unchecked KB976932 and tried to install KB2620704 but it failed with the error Code 800F0818.

Now you may get lucky after installing KB2620704 but I wasn’t. Here’s what I did next. Per TechNet article Advanced guidelines for diagnosing and fixing servicing corruption I looked at the two files listed at the end of the checksur.log.

servicing\packages\Package_for_KB2620704_SP1~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.1.1.0.mum
servicing\packages\Package_for_KB2620704_SP1~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.1.1.0.cat

Next I started cmd.exe as an administrator and backed up the two files as a precaution.

copy %windir%\servicing\packages\Package_for_KB2620704_SP1~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.1.1.0.mum c:\temp

copy %windir%\servicing\packages\Package_for_KB2620704_SP1~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.1.1.0.cat c:\temp

Then I took ownership of these files so I can copy these files from another server.

takeown /f %windir%\servicing\packages\Package_for_KB2620704_SP1~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.1.1.0.mum

takeown /f %windir%\servicing\packages\Package_for_KB2620704_SP1~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.1.1.0.cat

Next I used icacls to grant administrators permissions to overwrite the files.

icacls %windir%\servicing\packages\Package_for_KB2620704_SP1~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.1.1.0.mum /grant administrators:F

icacls %windir%\servicing\packages\Package_for_KB2620704_SP1~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.1.1.0.cat /grant administrators:F

Finally, I logged out and then logged back in so I can copy the two files from another server where I was able to successfully install KB2620704 to the server. Even though I was logged in with a domain account that was a member of the local administrators group the permission to copy the files was denied. I went to Windows\servicing\packages folder in Windows Explorer and gave my domain account  full-control permissions to the packages folder. I removed this permission after I was able to copy the two files. I ran the update for KB 2620704 and it was finally successful.

I then tried to install SP1 (KB976932) again. By that time I knew all these KB article numbers better than my address and phone number. Fortunately, this time it worked and I was able to install SP1 on my Windows Server 2008 R2. It only took about 40 hours in three days. Piece of cake!

SharePoint Server 2010 Installation

The rest of the article only applies to you if you are installing SharePoint Server 2010 on a new server. Once the service pack was installed, I should be able to install SharePoint, right? Wrong! This time the software prerequisites tool was able to install a couple of prerequisites, including the Web Server (IIS) Role, but was unable to install the hotfix KB976462.

Okay, no problem. I downloaded the hotfix KB976462 for my x64 system (Windows6.1-KB976462-v2-x64.msu) from here and tried to run it but got an error “The update is not applicable to your computer.” Here’s how I worked around that hurdle. I followed the instructions in yet another KB article KB934307.

1. I created a folder C:\KB976462 and downloaded the file Windows6.1-KB976462-v2-x64.msu into that folder.
2. I created a folder C:\TEMP.
3. I opened command prompt as an administrator and ran the following command to expand the MSU file to the temp folder which resulted in 4 files in the TEMP folder.
   expand -f:* “C:\KB976462\Windows6.1-KB976462-v2-x64.msu” C:\TEMP
4. Then I ran the following command.
   pkgmgr.exe /n:c:\temp\Windows6.1-KB976462-v2-x64.xml
   You will not see any message after you run this command successfully. Just wait a minute or so until the command prompt is returned and that’s how you will know if the command was successfully executed. The only time you will see a message is if something went wrong.
5. Next I double-clicked the Windows6.1-KB976462-v2-x64.msu file in the C:\KB976462 folder where I originally downloaded it. I got a pop up message that “The update is not applicable to your computer.” This is the same message I received when I had double-clicked the file the first time. By the way, some people have reported that they get the message that the patch is already installed.
   NOTE: Regardless of what message you see, you should simply ignore it and go to the next step and you will be a happy camper.
6. I ignored the notice and ran the SharePoint software prerequisites tool again. This time everything worked and I was able to install the software prerequisites.
   
7. I deleted both the C:\KB976462 and the C:\TEMP folders.
8. I rebooted the server. Even though I had not received any notices or warnings that I need to restart the server, when I tried to install SharePoint the wizard indicated that I must reboot first before proceeding to install SharePoint.
9. After the reboot I continued on with SharePoint Server 2010 installation without a hitch.

References

Here are the download links for Windows System Update Readiness Tool for Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows 7 and Windows Vista (KB947821).

System Update Readiness Tool for Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 Edition (KB947821) [August 2011] 315.6MB

System Update Readiness Tool for Windows 7 106.6MB

System Update Readiness Tool for Windows Vista 121.8MB

Here’s another related article KB947366 that might also help.

KB947366: How to troubleshoot Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 service pack installation issues

A hotfix for the.NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 is available for Windows 7 and for Windows Server 2008 R2 as a prerequisite for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2010.

KB976462: Prerequisite hotfix for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2010

This is the hotfix mentioned in the above link. It’s called SharePoint Shared Services Roll-up for Windows Server 2008 R2. Instead of going through all the hoops, you can download this hotfix from the following link.

KB976462: Download link for the prerequisite SharePoint Shared Services Roll-up

And finally here’s an article which describes the Windows Update Stand-alone Installer. I was able to use the information in this article to get over the last hurdle.

KB934307: Description of the Windows Update Stand-alone Installer (Wusa.exe) and of.msu files in Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 and in Windows Server 2008 R2