Sprydon

By SuperUser Account on 12/10/2009 3:38 AM

Installing Windows SharePoint Services on a Windows 7 machine is not directly supported by Microsoft but there is a way to do it and avoid having to build a Windows Server 2003 development machine just to carry out SharePoint development. As usual the problem has already been solved by someone else on the interweb.

The full details are set out in this blog post at Bamboo Nation.

But the key points to note are

• How to turn off the Application Compatibility Engine – this is the thing that prevents the SharePoint from installing on anything other than a Server platform such as Server 2003
• Using the SharePoint on Vista Helper file which lets run the setup file by tricking it into thinking its running on Server 2003
• Get the correct version of WSS installation files I found that only the WSS 3.0 Sp2 install worked for me but the article links to the sp1 version.

Finally the other thing that tripped me up was by default IIS 7 on Windows 7 does not not have Basic Authentication enabled and without that when you browse to the SharePoint administration site you just get a blank page – it easy to fix by starting the windows features dialog (type “features” and select “turn windows features on or off”) make sure that the check box for Basic Authentication under Internet Information Services –> World Wide Web Services –> Security is checked.

The next step is to then enable basic authentication to the SharePoint Administration site within the IIS Manager – see the image below:

By SuperUser Account on 11/16/2008 3:43 AM

I've been a customer of EasyCGI's windows vps service for about 18 months when completely out of the blue I got an email informing me they would be moving the hardware that my VPS was running on to a new data centre, I was given about 3 days notice and told that my VPS would be out of commission for anything from 6-12 hours. The email I received is repeated below:

 

Dear EasyCGI VPS Customer,
EasyCGI is in the process of changing data centers to improve the
overall performance of our hosting architecture, both our shared
platform and VPS platform.
We plan to move your VPS account to our new data center facility
this weekend, starting at 10:00pm EDT on Saturday, October 11,
2008, and continuing into Sunday, October 12. If this schedule
changes, we will update the following Web page with the latest
information:
http://www.easycgi.com/info/systemnotice.bml?id=6583
There will be a period of time when your server will not be
available and your site inaccessible to visitors. We will do our
best to minimize this downtime; we expect that it will last
between 12 and 24 hours, though we will work to restore service
as quickly as we can, and it is likely that your site will be
up and running again by mid-day Sunday.
We apologize for any inconvenience. We have scheduled this data
center move over a Saturday night/Sunday morning, when Web site
traffic is typically at its lowest, to minimize disruption.
To make this transition as smooth as possible, we recommend that
you minimize changes to your account until it has been moved.
You shouldn't need to do anything to complete the move to the
new data center, and you'll maintain your existing VPS
configurations. Also, your services should continue to function
just as they do now. Benefits of the new data center include:
* increased platform security and additional backup capabilities
* an upgrade to Virtuozzo 4.0, the most recent version release
If you have any questions or concerns about this data center move,
please call us at 866-327-9244.
Sincerely,
The EasyCGI Team

 

I was shocked that I was getting so little notice but passed on the news to my customers for whom I host web sites. That was bad enough but worse was to follow. At the weekend nothing happened until late Sunday evening when the VPS went down — so looks like the move started a little later than expected, no problem I thought and expected the VPS to be back up the following morning.

 

By Monday evening I was starting to get concerned as there was still no sign of my VPS and the EasyCGI support was completely overwhelmed — their "script" always started with an apology but there was no actual information forthcoming or an ETA as to when I could expect my VPS to be up and running again. By this time my customers were rightly concerned as their businesses depend on the availability of their web sites and email service (email and DNS was also hosted on the VPS). It seems I was far from alone with numerous angry posts on web forums and so I started the scramble to move my customers to a new hosting provider