Contents tagged with Windows Server 2003
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Fix the SharePoint DCOM 10016 error on Windows Server 2008 R2
If you have been installing SharePoint you have probably also seen and fixed the DCOM 10016 error. This error occurs in the event log when the SharePoint service accounts doesn't have the necessary permissions (Local Activation to the IIS WAMREG admin service). Your farm will still function, but your event log will be cluttered.
On a Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2008 machine you would just fire up the dcomcnfg utility (with elevated privileges) and enable Local Activation for your domain account.
But for Windows Server 2008 R2 (and Windows 7, since they share the same core) you cannot do this, the property dialog is all disabled due to permission restrictions. It doesn't matter if you are logged in as an administrator or using elevated privileges. The change is probably due to some new security improvements.
The reason for it being disabled is that this dialog is mapped to a key in the registry which the Trusted Installer is owner of and everyone else only has read permissions. The key used by the IIS WAMREG admin is:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AppID\{61738644-F196-11D0-9953-00C04FD919C1}
Image on the left shows the default permissions for Windows Server 2008 R2 and on the right the default settings for Windows Server 2008.
To be able to change the Launch and Activation Permissions with dcomcnfg you have to change the ownership if this key. Start the registry editor (regedit), find the key, click Advanced in the Permissions dialog of this key and select the Owner tab. Now change the owner of the key to the administrators group for example, then set full control to the administrators group. Make sure not to change the permissions for the TrustedInstaller.
Now you have to restart the dcomcnfg application and once find the IIS WAMREG application and then set the Launch and Activation settings that you need to get rid of the DCOM 10016 error.
Good luck!
WARNING: Changing the registry may seriously damage your server. All is on your own risk!
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Licensing your servers when developing for SharePoint
A recent discussion about how the licenses of Windows, SQL and SharePoint Servers should be handled when we are developing solutions using Virtual Machines made me throw away a mail to Emma Explains Licensing. The concern was that; do we have to pay licenses for every VM or test server? That would have been insane! But I wanted to have this explained how this licensing works - a lot of you perhaps already know but I always have a hard time getting all the different licensing options and rules.
Emma has written up a nice post on my question.
To make her excellent explanation a bit shorter; if you are a MSDN subscriber or a Visual Studio licensee then you are fully covered. You may use as many copies on any number of devices you like of the server products for developing, testing and demonstrations. You may not use it in live production or for staging environments.
To understand everything, please read Emma's post.
Have a nice weekend…
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Summertime
It’s summer and time for some vacation, finally. This year has been hard work so far – and I don’t expect it to get lighter this upcoming autumn and winter. I’ve had fun though!
Microsoft SharePoint has really been one thing occupying my work – it feels like everyone is not just looking at SharePoint, they want to use it now! We have a couple of cases that is really interesting and I hope that I have convinced them and proposed a nice solution.
About half a year ago, I predicted about 2008, half of them has come true; Windows Vista Service Pack 1, Internet Explorer 8 (only beta so far), nice parental leave (you bet) and OOXML ISO approval (not quite there yet, but anyway's).
Some things are yet to come, I hope; XPS submittal to ISO, time over for msfeedicon (sorry about all you out there waiting for it – but I have some plans…), testing new Media Center (this one could come true any day, Fiji is in private beta) and upgrading customers to Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008.
I would like to add some new things to the list; Townsquare (this could really turn the heat up), PDC 2008 (I really hope I can go there) and Windows 7 beta (or as it might turn out to be Windows Vista R2).
That’s all for me for now, don’t expect to much blogging over the next few weeks…
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About the Microsoft interoperability changes
A few days ago Microsoft dropped the news that they are increasing their openness regarding interoperability. This is great news for the world of software, even though everyone has their own opinions in this matter.
What now have been made public is more than 30.000 pages of documentation of the various protocols used within Microsoft server products (Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, Office 2007, Exchange Server 2007, and Office SharePoint Server 2007). You can find the documentation in the MSDN Library or on the Microsoft Download site.
I found a few interesting documents that I think are worth reading or saving for future reference:
WebDAV extensions
There are three documents related to extensions Microsoft have made to the WebDAV protocol, which includes some new verbs (GETLIB), headers and optimizations of the WebDAV protocol.
- [MS-WDV]: Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) Protocol: Client Extensions
- [MS-WDVME]: Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) Protocol: Microsoft Extensions
- [MS-WDVSE]: Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) Protocol: Server Extensions
- [MS-WDVRN]: World Wide Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) Noroot Depth Protocol Specification
- [MS-WDVRV]: World Wide Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) MS-Author-Via Protocol Specification
If you are working with implementing WebDAV enabled software/applications and would like integrate with the Office products these are highly interesting.
Windows Search Protocol
This document describes how to interact (search or manage) with the Windows Search service.
Security
The document called [MS-SECO] Windows Security Overview contains really good information on the security in Windows and how authentication and authorization is handled as well as detailed information on security principals, SIDs and accounts and groups.
I welcome this strategic change by Microsoft. It is a lot to read, but if/when Microsoft gets the search on MSDN to work better (I currently use Google to search MSDN) we will have much easier to understand how the different products interact.
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Planning Capacity for SharePoint and Exchange
If you are about to plan capacity for your Microsoft SharePoint 2007 topology you can get great assistance from the Microsoft System Center Capacity Planner 2007 and the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Model. What is Microsoft System Center Capacity Planner 2007?
The Microsoft System Center Capacity Planner (SCCP) 2007 is a pre-deployment capacity planning tool for Microsoft Server products when creating distributed application deployments.
The SCCP allows you to create a model of your hardware, network and applications/servers using a Model Editor. The model can then be run through a simulator which warns you of eventual bottlenecks and allows you to analyze all kinds of different data.
SCCP also contains a hardware editor (CPU and hard disk configurations) so you can customize your model and adapt it to your existing hardware or hardware that you intend to use.
The SCCP can be loaded with different Capacity Models and wizards, which helps you to create your topology.
Some Screenshots
The image above shows a SharePoint intranet site with three branch offices and the image below shows how the topology looks like when you zoom in to the Intranet Site.
Using this Model editor you can change everything from the networks used to the number of users to the roles of the servers and then run a simulation to identify your bottlenecks.
This is how the hardware editor looks like and you can see how detailed you can configure the CPUs.
Capacity Models
There are only one Capacity Model out of the box; Exchange Server 2007.
The SharePoint models can be downloaded here and should appear soon on the TechNet System Center Pack Catalog and an Operations Manager model is in beta and should be shipped before summer.
Summary
This is a great tool for IT-professionals as well as architects and developers to identify possible problems before start wiring and plugging in. I can really recommend SCCP; especially when making proposals to clients, so you can test the recommended setup. I have been running the beta and RC for a while and are very satisfied with it.
The tool can of course not replace good knowledge of the products and hardware and should be used with caution.
The only drawback I found is that it should be possible to combine your models. For example making a content deployment (with staging, authoring and publishing sites) scenario with MOSS 2007 is not possible, you have to make several models and then make your own analysis
Where can I get this?
SCCP can be downloaded from the Microsoft Downloads site (4.7 Mb) as of today and the SharePoint models here (3.2 Mb).
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Vista SP1 is imminent and Windows Server 2008 is RTM
The Release Notes for Windows Vista Service Pack 1 just appeared on the Microsoft Downloads Site.
And just after this Microsoft posted a Media Alert: Microsoft Releases Windows Vista Service Pack 1, Windows Server 2008 to Manufacturing.Finally!
Vista Service Pack 1 will be available "to customers in March" and Windows Server 2008 will "be available [...] on March 1".
When will it be available on Microsoft Downloads or for MSDN/TechNet Subscribers?
Update: The Windows Vista Team Blog has detailed timings for Vista SP1
Update 2: Windows Server 2008 is available for MSDN and TechNet Subscribers
Let the fun begin...
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MOSS 2007 and WSS 3.0 Service Pack 1 is out
Not only the Office 2007 clients got updated to Service Pack 1 today, Service Pack 1 is also out for the Office Server family and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0.
Here are some of the downloads...
- Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 with Service Pack 1 - for new installs
- Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Service Pack 1 - for upgrades
- Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Language Packs
- Microsoft Office Servers Service Pack 1 - SharePoint Server, Project Server, Forms Server and Groove Server
- Microsoft Office Server Language Pack 2007 Service Pack 1
- Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2007 Service Pack 1
All are 32-Bit Editions, you can find links to the 64-bits in the instructions.
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Windows Home Server only on pre-built systems?
Windows Home Server, WHS, is a great addition to the Windows Server family, a product that I have wanted to have for a really long time. It will really help me connect my machines at home and provide great features to the connected home and make me share my digital media easier between Media Centers, laptops etc.
I have hoped that I could turn my current Media Center, a quite powerful machine, into a Home Server later this year once it is time to build my own new Media Center. I would like to make a clean install of Windows Home Server on that old (2 1/2 years) machine after picking WHS up from my local store.
But, it seems like WHS will only be provided pre-installed on systems provided from HP etc and not be available as an of-the-shelf product! Why!? I do not want to spend a lot of money on a designed "puck", even though I think they look nice, but having another box in my living room is out of the question (just ask my wife :-)! I want a big Home Server with plenty of space for disks, and I will place it in the attic, where it may be noisy - but cool - and running 24/7.
Please give us the option to buy it as a regualr operating system.
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Microsoft XPS Essentials Pack 1.0 RTW
Microsoft has released version 1.0 of the XML Paper Specification Essentials Pack. The pack is available for Windows Vista or Windows XP and Windows 2003 Server (both 32 bit and 64 bit versions is available).
XPS Essentials Pack contains- An XPS viewer called XPS Viewer EP - for reading XPS files
- An XPS Document writer - for printing to an XPS file
- Filters for previewing (IPreview) and searching (IFilter) XPS files
- Windows Shell handlers, for Windows Explorer integration and thumbnails
Note: On Windows Vista Internet Explorer will still be the default viewer for XPS files. Just right click any XPS file and choose Open With and then Choose Default Program. In the dialog choose the XPS viewer you want to use as default.
Total Commander 7.0 in beta
My favorite Windows Explorer replacement Total Commander is in beta for version 7.0.
Total Commander is a great tool for managing files and folders and totally replaces the Windows Explorer for me since it is so much faster in managing files and folders in just one simple window.
Version 7.0 contains mostly a nicer interface but includes some highlights such as:
- Show the drive names in the tabs
- Alternating background colors on files and folders
- Nicer overwrite dialog with thumbnail preview
- Run as administrator when privileges are insufficient
I have been a huge fan of the application since I first discovered it years ago (when it was called Windows Commander). When DOS was the primary interface of the PC I used the ASCII based Norton Commander for DOS.