Sharepoint Search 2007 is blocked on Server 2008

You've got an error when installing Sharepoint Search on your shiny new Windows 2008 server. The message is a bit imprecise and the event viewer log shows as

"The application (Office SharePoint Server 2007, from vendor Microsoft) was hard-blocked and raised the following: You must install Office SharePoint Server 2007 with the most recent service pack. Office SharePoint Server 2007 without service packs has a known compatibility issue with this version of Windows."

Windows 2008 Server blocks the install of the Sharepoint 2007 Search application as it is not compatible with Server 2008 without Sharepoint SP1.

What this means, despite appearing otherwise, is not that Sharepoint needs to be installed with the SP1 (which it is anyway) but that the installer for Sharepoint Search does not include the SP1 files and is therefore incompatible.

The process to get around this is to download both SP1 for Sharepoint WSS and MOSS.

wssv3sp1-kb936988-x64-fullfile-en-us
officeserver2007sp1-kb936984-x64-fullfile-en-us

Then extract both of these to the search_install\upgrades directory where the search_install is the name of the install directory. Note that there are no duplicate files.

i.e. C:\Install\MOSS-Search-2007-x64\Upgrades

This provides the installer with the SP’s and allows it to proceed when you run it again.

Changing the Name of the Sharepoint_AdminContent Database

Sharepoint during the initial installation creates a Sharepoint_AdminContent database with a GUID as a part of the db name. To a pedant like myself its annoying and when you have more than 1 sharepoint config on the same SQL server it's downright confusing. But there is no neat interface.

I did some research and found Keith Ritchies blog entry on PSConfig with some good notes on doing this.

However I struck a couple of issues with psconfig throwing errors and ended up modifying his command line as follows.

Keiths:
psconfig -cmd configdb -create -server krichie-fosqlp -database krichie-fo-wss-configdb -user adomain\SPService -password "SPServicePassword" -admincontentdatabase krichie-fo-wss-admin-content -dbuser adomain\SQLService -dbpassword "SQLServicePassword"

Remove the second dbuser and password details.

Now:
psconfig -cmd configdb -create -server krichie-fosqlp -database krichie-fo-wss-configdb -user adomain\SPService -password "SPServicePassword" -admincontentdatabase krichie-fo-wss-admin-content

Not sure how this affects anything but I could not get psconfig to acknowledge the username for the second database. It just did not like it. Admittedly my install is on Server 2008/SQL 2008 and Keiths post was dated back in 2006 so something may have changed.

Windows 2008 Server 64-bit & PHP5 32-bit

Using PHP5 32 bit on a 64 bit Windows 2008 server. Why? I dont know. I'll check that later. Problem with a new website index.php generating a Windows 404.17 error when its trying to treat the *.php file as a static file and not a PHP script.

The Website Advanced Settings (IIS7) needs to have Enable 32-bit changed from False to True.

IIS7 & PHP5

I am constantly setting up Sugar CRM versions - new ones each month - and working with different platforms as we upgrade.

The latest was to also swap to a new server platform in Windows Server 2008 with connection to a separate MS-SQL server all in 64-bit. Installed PHP5 and found amongst other things that sugar was giving a "cannot connect to database server" error when first loading.

Quoting from http://www.userscape.com/helpdesk/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=13

The resolution is with the "ntwdblib.dll Version - On some systems the ntwdblib.dll version is too old to work correctly with PHP. If your version does not end in 80.194.0 it's probably too old. You can download the 80.194 version here."

I was puzzled that the PHP5 install still includes a very old version 7.x something but went ahead and updated the ntwdblib.dll to the 80.194 version and the database error was cured.

Seven Words They Do Say on Television

Doing some web searching this morning and I came across a couple of articles about the late George Carlin. As an avid George fan way back in the 70's and 80's I lost 30 minutes or so reading articles including the Washington Post regarding a posthumous Twain prize awarded to Carlin last night (US time).

'Irony on irony' is the result of bleeping out the Seven Words You Can't Say on Television!

The stupidity for me is that the Carlin skit was first aired circa 1970 (I have not checked but I think this is right) and in the ensuing 38 years have seen the appearance of all bar one that I am aware of, and that one may well have been used just not in my hearing.

So why on earth would you censor a comedy skit that simply plays on the words and their common usage and questions why we use some of these words to hurt each other. We use them on TV already.... or maybe Australian censorship laws are more relaxed and the US made movies and shows that we see get a different soundtrack to what is played at home in the US. Maybe the irony is that the only people that don't hear the words are those to whom George was directing them.

Regardless, I am sure it's true that Carlin was simply way ahead of his time.

R.I.P George.

Fake Spyware message in Windows

Fixing a PC with a stupid Spyware bubble message.




"Windows has detected spyware infection!" is the alarming message popping up from your Windows toolbar. Windows XP in this case but likely to occur on other versions in a similar way.

Its not Windows doing the detection. The Windows operating system does not do detection. Spyware products do.

The other clues about this being a fake message is that the spelling is atrocious. 'pervent' instead of 'prevent' and 'recomended' instead of 'recommended'.

The message is malware. In longer words, the message is from a piece of software that is malicously designed and sent to your computer via an email or from a website. Once it is in the computer it's main aim is to get you to click on the bubble message and download their product which you then need to pay for.

Having spent a number of hours booting and rebooting, trying various AV techniques and looking into the registry I located more than a handful of issues including a rootkit. At that point I decided to grab what data I could save and reimage the system. Painful, but less so than manually trying to recover and still ending up with a compromised system.

First Take!

Hmm... musing on blogging and why or why not. I spend so much time tracking down fixes for computer issues that I have finally taken a leap and started a blog of my findings. 25 years of computers and sorting problems out and I've forgotten more than I remember about software and systems. In some ways thats ok as a lot of the software and systems no longer exist. So this blog is all about my PC experiences past and present.