I ticked the checkbox and selected Edit Properties from the ribbon.  This produced a File Not Found error.

I navigated to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\LOGS on the web front end server and opened the latest log file.  Searching for FileNotFound found the error below

System.IO.FileNotFoundException: The file /hr/_catalogs/masterpage/_controltemplates/Welcome.ascx does not exist.

A quick Google for the error indicated that the error was related to the masterpage.  This site has a custom masterpage which resides at the top level of the farm and when checked was fine.  However, the error was being produced by the default.master masterpage for the site.  Viewing the site in SharePoint Designer, I opened the default.master masterpage under _catalogs/masterpage and navigated to the top section of the file below

<%@ Register TagPrefix=”wssuc” TagName=”Welcome” src=”_controltemplates/Welcome.ascx” %>
<%@ Register TagPrefix=”wssuc” TagName=”MUISelector” src=”_controltemplates/MUISelector.ascx” %>
<%@ Register TagPrefix=”wssuc” TagName=”DesignModeConsole” src=”_controltemplates/DesignModeConsole.ascx” %>

The error is caused by the three lines missing ~/ from the src.  Updating the tags as below fixed the error

<%@ Register TagPrefix=”wssuc” TagName=”Welcome” src=”~/_controltemplates/Welcome.ascx” %>
<%@ Register TagPrefix=”wssuc” TagName=”MUISelector” src=”~/_controltemplates/MUISelector.ascx” %>
<%@ Register TagPrefix=”wssuc” TagName=”DesignModeConsole” src=”~/_controltemplates/DesignModeConsole.ascx” %>

• Build a Windows Server 2008 R2 server
• Install a standalone instance of SharePoint 2010
• Copy over and restore the live content, profile, social and sync databases
• Install and apply any customization and web parts.

Install Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1.  If you run Windows Update, don’t install .NET Framework 4 as it’s incompatible with SharePoint 2010.

Run splash.hta from the SharePoint installation source and install prerequisites

Continue to run and reboot until all prerequisites are installed

Install SharePoint server, enter product key, choose standalone installation type

Run the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard

Open Central Administration -> Application Management -> Change site collection administrators -> Select the primary and secondary site administrators

Open Central Administration -> Security -> Manage the farm administrators group.  Add the required user accounts to farm administrators

Backup the live content database and the profile, social and sync databases using SQL Server Management Studio.  To determine the live content database name open Central Administration -> Application Management -> Manage content databases.    Select the correct Web Application and the database name will be displayed.  Clicking the database name takes you to a screen with the SQL server name.  To determine live profile, social and sync database names, open Central Administration -> Application Management -> Manage service applications.  Highlight the “User Profile Sync” line and select Properties from the ribbon.  The popup shows the database server and database names.  Copy the backups to a folder on the development server.

Delete the content database for the SharePoint – 80 web application.  Open Central Administration -> Application Management -> Manage Content Databases.  Click on the database name, scroll to the bottom of the next page, tick “Remove content database” and click OK.

Delete the “User Profile Synchronization” service application.  Open Central Administration -> Application Management -> Manage service applications.  Highlight the “User Profile Synchronization” line and select Delete.  Tick the box to “Delete data associated with the Service Applications”.

The SQL Server in my live environment is running SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1, so I upgraded the SQL Express 2008 instance installed by SharePoint to SQL Server 2008 R2 Express. http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=23650 .  Next I installed SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1.

Open SSMSE, in “Server name:” enter “localhost\sharepoint” and click Connect.  Restore the live database backups to the local SQL instance.

Attach the restored database to SharePoint using PowerShell.  Open the SharePoint 2010 Management Shell and type: Mount-SPContentDatabase -Name <DatabaseName> -DatabaseServer<ServerName> -WebApplication <URL>

Apply any customizations and install web parts

Configure the Farm Account.  Open Central Administration -> Security -> Configure service accounts.  Click “Register new managed account” and enter the farm account information.  Select “Farm Account” from the list and select your newly registered service account from the list.

Create a new ”User Profile Synchronization” service application that points to the restored databases.  Open Central Administration -> Application Management -> Manage service applications.  Click New -> User Profile Service Application from the ribbon.  Enter a name, an application pool and for the profile, synchronization and social databases enter the name of the restored databases, then click Create.

Run a full crawl of the environment.  Open Central Administration -> Application Management -> Manage service applications.  Click on “Search Service Application”.  From the left hand menu click on “Content Sources”, hover over “Local SharePoint sites” and select Edit from the dropdown list.  Scroll to the bottom of the screen and tick “Start full crawl of this content source” and click Ok.

I was deploying the drivers to Dell OptiPlex desktops and Latitude laptops, so I downloaded the drivers from http://support.euro.dell.com/ .  The drivers download as compressed files, so I extract them using 7-zip http://www.7-zip.org/.  This leaves you with a set of files like those below.

In the screenshot above you’ll see setup.cmd batch file.  This is the secret to deploying the drivers using SCCM.  The Intel documentation states that you can run setup.exe -s to silently install the drivers.  However, when I created a software distribution package and set it to run setup.exe -s the drivers never installed and the installer routine exited due to an invalid command option.  What you need to do is create a batch file which calls setup.exe -s and point the software package as the batch file, e.g.

\\SCCMSERVER\SoftwareDistribution\Packages\755_HECI_Driver\setup.exe -s

Firstly, download the BIOS update from Dell technical support http://support.euro.dell.com/support/  The BIOS file will be named something like 0755-A21.exe .  This is the A21 BIOS revision for the Dell OptiPlex 755.

Next, in System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) create a standard software package.  Set the command line to the BIOS file followed by -NOREBOOT –NOPAUSE .  This enables the BIOS update to run silently and without rebooting the system.  I additionally set the package to run “whether or not a user is logged on” using the setting on the Environment tab.

Go to your operating system deployment task sequence and choose Add -> General -> Install Software.  Select the BIOS update package.  Next, click into the Options tab and click “Add Condition” and select “Query WMI”  and enter SELECT SMBIOSBIOSVersion From Win32_BIOS WHERE SMBIOSBIOSVersion < “A21″ Replace A21 with the BIOS version you’re using for the update.  This WMI Query ensures the BIOS is flashed only if it’s older than a given version.  I then have a restart task to reboot the machine and flash the BIOS.

01/17/2012 11:55:26.18 SPUCWorkerProcess.exe (0×8790) 0x92CC SharePoint Foundation Sandboxed Code Service fe8s Medium – - Unhandled exception was thrown by the sandboxed code wrapper’s Execute method in the partial trust app domain: An unexpected error has occurred. – userCodeWrapperType = “Microsoft.SharePoint.UserCode.SPUserCodeWebPartWrapper”, userAssemblyGroupId = “BCC815A08E2A4C64923709F32FA00B92-by0V1RUaCe3c88sryp9ER7slGEpZXlqosRuCBMbd6hY=”, siteCollectionId = “1eb54e14-572f-4fd9-a8e7-33b9869d3e96″ – Inner Exception: Microsoft.SharePoint.UserCode.SPUserCodeSolutionProxiedException: Value cannot be null. Parameter name: path1 at System.IO.Path.Combine(String path1, String path2) at System.Web.HttpRawUploadedContent.TempFile..ctor() at System.Web.HttpRawUploadedContent.AddBytes(Byte[] data, Int32 offset, Int32 length) at System.Web.HttpRequest.GetEntireRawContent() at System.Web… 9b39d39d-ebb5-4ddd-9387-efff7785962b

01/17/2012 11:55:26.18* SPUCWorkerProcess.exe (0×8790) 0x92CC SharePoint Foundation Sandboxed Code Service fe8s Medium ….HttpRequest.GetMultipartContent() at System.Web.HttpRequest.FillInFormCollection() at System.Web.HttpRequest.get_Form() at System.Web.HttpRequest.get_HasForm() at System.Web.UI.Page.GetCollectionBasedOnMethod(Boolean dontReturnNull) at System.Web.UI.Page.DeterminePostBackMode() at Microsoft.SharePoint.UserCode.SPUserCodePage.DeterminePostBackMode() at System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint) 9b39d39d-ebb5-4ddd-9387-efff7785962b

01/17/2012 11:55:26.18 SPUCHostService.exe (0×6404) 0x97F0 SharePoint Foundation Sandboxed Code Service 0000 Medium – - Value cannot be null. Parameter name: path1 – Request executing userSolution Id “bcc815a0-8e2a-4c64-9237-09f32fa00b92″ for site collection id ” 1eb54e14-572f-4fd9-a8e7-33b9869d3e96″ has encountered an unhandled exception while executing user code. 9b39d39d-ebb5-4ddd-9387-efff7785962b

Searching Google indicated that the error could be due to the size of the HTTP request.   In order to resolve the error I opened the sandbox solution web.config file in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\UserCode\web.config.  I added <httpRuntime requestLengthDiskThreshold = “4096″ /> to the system.web section of the file according to the information here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/e1f13641.aspx .

Once you’ve saved the site template you can view it in the Solutions gallery.  Navigate to the top level site and choose Site Actions ->Site Settings, then choose Solutions in the Galleries section.  You can use this area to activate, deactivate and delete site templates.  If you need to delete a site template, deactivate it first, otherwise it may continue to show in the site template list when you create a site.

Error: Can not finish WSMAN call with target device. 1. Check if there is a winhttp proxy to block connection. 2. Service point is trying to establish connection with wireless IP address of AMT firmware but wireless management has NOT enabled yet. AMT firmware doesn’t support provision through wireless connection. 3. For greater than 3.x AMT, there is a known issue in AMT firmware that WSMAN will fail with FQDN longer than 44 bytes. (MachineId = 11578)

From the command prompt enter  ”proxycfg -d” to bypass the proxy.  Alternatively, open IE, set proxy server, tick “Bypass proxy server for local addresses”  and enter *.%YOURDOMAIN%. Next, from the command prompt enter “proxycfg -u”.  This import the proxy settings from IE.

I was testing SharePoint 2010 recovery using DPM and got a shock when a site and page I setup for the testing weren’t listed as being available for recovery despite the fact I’d just created a recovery point.  It turns out they had been backed up, but the DPM catalog was out of date.  The steps below detail how to update the catalog.

Open the DPM Management Shell and enter the commands below, substituting X for you DPM server name

$PG = Get-ProtectionGroup -DPMServerName X

Press Enter, type $PG and press Enter again and you should see a table with two columns.

Type $DS = Get-Datasource $PG[X] and press Enter.  Substitute X with the number of the datasource in the list above.  In my case I want to update the catalog for the “SharePoint 2010″ datasource, which is third in the list, so I enter [2] as the list is zero based.   Type $DS and press Enter.

The output above shows the details for the selected datasource.  I want to update the catalog for the Sharepoint Farm, so type the command below and press Enter.  $DS[0] is the value of the datasource item within the list.  This list is also zero based.

Start-CreateCatalog -Datasource $DS[0]

Allow a few minutes for the catalog to update and the items will be available for recovery.