I have some development machines with Visual Studio 2017 and/or 2019 installed. Too many to constantly install updates in.

For a long time I was looking for a solution for this, but I did not find one. Supposedly the automatic update of Visual Studio is not possible.

In the end… I have found a way.

In a nutshell:

1. Download the latest Visual Studio Installer for the respective version.
2. Install the VS Installer update.
3. Use the VS Installer to run the Visual Studio Update.

Look at this:

https://github.com/ikarstein/auto-update-vs

This is more “for the record” than it makes real sense. But why not? For a few years “PS2EXE” was represented on Technet and has over 90.000 downloads to date. That is super great. – Meanwhile there is also a successor, which I didn’t develop, but it seems to be alive. That makes me happy, even if a bit wistful, because I didn’t manage to stay on the ball with this little project.

So here is the link: https://github.com/ikarstein/ps2exe

I have had this exception on SharePoint 2013 pages on several servers after they are running a for one or two days:

“An error occurred during the compilation of the requested file, or one of its dependencies.”

In the Windows Event Log -> Application I found this error:

There are two possible reasons (maybe there are more 😉 ):

1. There was .NET Framework 4.6.x installed but was removed in order to “fix” the SharePoint 2013 setup failure message.
   

   In this case you need to re-install .NET Framework 4.6.x after SharePoint 2013 setup. SharePoint 2013 is fully supported with 4.6.x!

    

2. If the server is under heavy load and there are lots of processes startet in the Windows OS, then the “Desktop Heap” could be out of memory.
   

   In this case you need to increase the Desktop Heap size of the “Inactive Windows Desktop”.

   1. Open the Windows registry and navigate to HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\SessionManager\SubSystems
   2. Open Property “Windows”
   3. Copy the complete content …
   4. … into Notepad
   5. Change the 3rd value of the “SharedSection” part to 20480.
   6. Copy the whole string back into the registry property “Windows”
   7. Reboot your server

   

   This will increase the Dektop Heap to 20MB for the inactive desktops.
   Links:

   https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/winsdk/2015/06/03/what-is-up-with-the-application-failed-to-initialize-properly-0xc0000142-error/
   https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/126962
   https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ntdebugging/2007/01/04/desktop-heap-overview/

Today I got an error on my development farm after I updated SP 2013 to SP1 level. I also removed Visual Studio 2012 from the box and installed Visual Studio 2013.

In fact I did the SP1 update as last step.

Than I tried to run the “SharePoint 2013 Products Configuration Wizard” and got this error in the first update step (“Initializing…”):

One ore more typed failed to load.

I was pretty sure this error was caused by the Visual Studio “update”

Could not load file or assembly ‘Microsoft.Data.Edm, Version=5.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35’ or one of its dependencies.

Could not load file or assembly ‘Microsoft.Data.OData, Version=5.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35’ or one of its dependencies.

After some research I found this two components belong to “WCF Data Services 5.0 for OData V3”.

I downloaded the package from http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29306 and installed it on my SharePoint dev box.

After that the “Products Configuration Wizard” worked as expected.

In the last couple of months I got several times the following error:

The Managed Metadata Service Application was not accessible in the Central Administration.

 

I checked all know issues of missing security settings of the service application and in the database. – Everything as expected.

Some days before it worked like a charm.

In one case I saw the problem appear after deploying the (new) Service Pack 1.

In the ULS is this error:

Failed to get term store for proxy ‘Managed Metadata Service Application’. Exception: System.Collections.Generic.KeyNotFoundException: The given key was not present in the dictionary.
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Taxonomy.Internal.XmlDataReader.GetDateTime(String name)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Taxonomy.Internal.SharedTermStore.Initialize(IDataReader dataReader, Guid termStoreIdValue, Boolean fromPersistedData)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Taxonomy.Internal.SharedTermStore..ctor(IDataReader dataReader, Guid termStoreId, Boolean fromPersistedData)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Taxonomy.Internal.DataAccessManager.GetTermStoreData(MetadataWebServiceApplicationProxy sharedServiceProxy, Boolean& partitionCreated)

Searching the internet I found no solution but exactly the same error, e.g:

http://sharepoint-community.net/forum/topics/failed-to-get-term-store-for-proxy-managed-metadata-service

I tried lots of suggested approaches, e.g. to re-create the service application using the old database. Nothing worked for me.

Finally I tried the following and it solved the issue without loosing data.

1. Check and note all settings of the service application, especially security and properties (Hub Url, etc.)

2. Backup the service application using PowerShell and cmdlet Backup-SPFarm:

Add-PSSnapin “Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell” -ea 0

backup-spfarm -BackupMethod full -Directory \\kcdevsqlexch1\backup\SvcApp -item “Farm\Shared Services\Shared Services Applications\Managed Metadata Service Application” -verbose

backup-spfarm -BackupMethod full -Directory \\kcdevsqlexch1\backup\SvcAppProxy -item “Farm\Shared Services\Shared Services Proxies\Managed Metadata Service Application” -verbose

You can  get the “item” path from command:

Backup-SPFarm -ShowTree

The names maybe different on your system.

You need to create a network share for the backup data.

3. After that I deleted the service application using the Central Administration. Including the database.

4. Now I run the restore commands in PowerShell:

Restore-SPFarm -Directory \\kcdevsqlexch1\backup\SvcApp -RestoreMethod New  -Verbose

Restore-SPFarm -Directory \\kcdevsqlexch1\backup\SvcAppProxy -RestoreMethod New  -Verbose

5. The next thing was to add the restored service application to the service application proxy groups, in my case only the “Default” proxy group.

6. The last step was to check security settings and service application properties. In my case I had to restore the settings and security manually.

That’s it. Managed Metadata Service Application working again. No data lost.

If you want to follow these steps make sure you have tested everything yourself. Make database backups. Note all settings. As always you do it on your own risk!

One of my customers has a SharePoint 2013 farm with content migrated from SharePoint 2010.

In the past on SharePoint 2010 they have had the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Reporting Services-Add-In for SharePoint enabled on some sites. Because they did not need it any more they removed it from SharePoint but without deactivating the Report Server feature on each site collection.

Now on SharePoint 2013 this lead to problems with 3 orphaned content types:

• Report Builder Model
• Report Builder Report
• Report Data Source

First I tried to remove the corresponding feature “ReportServer” with ID e8389ec7-70fd-4179-a1c4-6fcb4342d7a0 from the site:

Get-SPFeature : Cannot find an Enabled Feature object with Id: e8389ec7-70fd-4179-a1c4-6fcb4342d7a0 in scope Site Url: https://sp2013.kc-dev.com/sites/reportingservices.

Than I tried to remove the content types manually using the web GUI and PowerShell. I got this errors:

and

Same message: “The content type “Report Builder Model” is part of an application feature.”

After reading some articles I found two propesed ways:

• Waldek Mastykarz: http://blog.mastykarz.nl/content-type-part-application-feature-error/
  The solution there is to prevent this problem. – RIGHT!!!! – But for me it is too late.
• The second (that I will not link here) said: The only way is to modify the content database directory. – NEVER EVER.

At last I found another way to get rid of the orphaned site collections.

In the following demo I use the content types of the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Reporting Services SharePoint Addon. I installed it on a SharePoint 2010 platform and created a site collection “https://sp2010.kc-dev.com/sites/reportingservices” in a seperate content database.

Than I migrated this content database to SharePoint 2013 including site collection upgrade. – New URL: https://sp2013.kc-dev.com/sites/reportingservices

Than I checked the usage of the content types using the static method GetUsage of Microsoft.SharePoint.SPContentTypeUsage.

In my case all 3 content types are used in a single list. It is necessary to remove each usage of each content type!! – In my case I deleted the list. After deletation it need to be removed from the recycle bin too!

… and also from the site collection recycle bin!

Now my site collection is clean. No results when checking the usage again:

After that I created a new folder in the FEATURES sub folder in the SharePoint hive:

Than I created the following script to create a dummy feature inside this folder. The dummy feature uses EXACLTY the same feature Id as the missing feature containing the orphaned content types.

Note #1: The feature ID is the same as for the original Reporting Services feature!

Note #2: For this content types it is necessary to remove the XmlDocuments tag and ist content. Otherwise the next step will fail.

With that script I took the cotnent type XML out of SharePoint into a elements.xml file.

Than I was able to install the feature using PowerShell:

At this point the missing feature is back in SharePoint. The system now will not moan if I deactivate the feature.

BEFORE deactivating I made a screenshot of the site content types page:

After this command…

… the site content types page looks like this:

The orphaned content types are gone!

Note: Maybe you get an error during deactivation saying the feature is not active at the scope. In this case you need to activate the feature first and deactivate it afterwards!

The last step is to remove the dummy feature:

That’s it.

Here you download the script if you like: http://bit.ly/OCToWx

Today I want to show you a small PowerShell snippet that I created for a webinar for AvePoint. It’s a webinar in German language about the DocAve module “Content Manager”.

The snippet will show you how to store a encrypted password in a plain text file.

Therefore I use some Windows OS APIs that are accessible in .NET:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.security.cryptography.protecteddata.protect(v=vs.110).aspx

This encapsulates the “Data Protection API” of Windows: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms995355.aspx

With the methods of this class you are able to encrypt and decrypt data very easily, either in the context of the current user or in the context of the local machine.

The encrypted data can only be decrypted on the same machine in the same context as where they were encrypted.

Very easy and handy. It is  NOT EASY BUT POSSIBLE to decrypt it on another machine. Just read the article mentioned above, especially the section “DPAPI Security” (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms995355.aspx#windataprotection-dpapi_topic04).

It is DocAve specific but of course you can modify it for your own purpose.

Here is the Script:

<##
  Created by Ingo Karstein 
    https://blog.kenaro.com
##>

#Load Modules and Assemblies
Import-Module-Name "C:\program files\AvePoint\DocAve6\Shell\DocAveModules\DocAveModule" -DisableNameChecking
[System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("System.Security") | Out-Null

#Current folder of script
$path = Split-Path $MyInvocation.MyCommand.Path

#Config values
$docavemanageruser = "admin"
$docavemanagerserver = "kcdevsqlexch1"
$docavemanagerport = 14000

#Read password from file or get it from user and store it into a file
if( [string]::IsNullOrEmpty($docavepwd) ) {
  if( Test-Path "$($path)\pwd.txt" ) {
     $data= [System.Convert]::FromBase64String((Get-Content "$($path)\pwd.txt" -Encoding UTF8))
     $global:docavepwd = [System.Text.Encoding]::UTF8.GetString([System.Security.Cryptography.ProtectedData]::Unprotect($data, (123,54,67,89,12,32,146), "CurrentUser"))
  } else {
     $global:docavepwd = Read-Host "Enter AvePoint ""$($docavemanageruser)"" password"
     $data= [System.Security.Cryptography.ProtectedData]::Protect( ([System.Text.Encoding]::UTF8.GetBytes($docavepwd)) ,(123,54,67,89,12,32,146), "CurrentUser")

     [System.Convert]::ToBase64String($data) | Set-Content "$($path)\pwd.txt" -Encoding UTF8 -Force
  }
}

#exit if no password
if( [string]::IsNullOrEmpty($docavepwd) ) {
  exit
}

$success=$false
#check if already logged in into DocAve
try {
  $success= (Get-DALocalUser -ErrorAction 0) -ne $null 
  if( !$? ) {
    $success=$false
  }
} catch {
  $success=$false
}

#If not already logged in: Login using credentials
if( !$success ) {
  $cred = New-Object System.Management.Automation.PSCredential( $docavemanageruser, (ConvertTo-SecureString -Force -AsPlainText $docavepwd))
  Login-DAManager -ControlHost $docavemanagerserver -ControlPort $docavemanagerport -Credential $cred
  if( $? -eq $false ) {
    exit
  }
}