John Workman

How can you tell if your SharePoint server is a Farm or Standalone?

John Workman — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 19:02:55 GMT

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/workdog/archive/2012/04/17/149356.aspx

How can you tell if your SharePoint server is a Farm or Standalone?

Check the registry

"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\14.0\WSS"

There will be an entry for "ServerRole" which will tell you the installation type

Stand Alone -
SINGLESERVER

Farm Stand Alone -
WFE

Farm Complete -
APPLICATION

Check the registry

"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\14.0\WSS"

There will be an entry for "ServerRole" which will tell you the installation type

Stand Alone -
SINGLESERVER

Farm Stand Alone -
WFE

Farm Complete -
APPLICATION

*** This is the response from a forum. Thanks to Yannis for the answer.

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepoint2010general/thread/a498bb63-c706-471a-ad3f-1e6c63d4e3cc/http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepoint2010general/thread/a498bb63-c706-471a-ad3f-1e6c63d4e3cc/

Windows 7 Ultimate from VHD

John Workman — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 10:12:38 GMT

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/workdog/archive/2009/10/27/135762.aspx

Now that I switched to Ultimate, I am running Windows 7 Ultimate on my work laptop from a VHD. I am able to boot back to XP if needed, and my original harddrive is now my D: drive. it's great. IT is happy because I didn't muck with their image. I'm happy because I'm running Win7. All is good.

Here's how I did it:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/2953-virtual-hard-drive-vhd-file-create-start-boot.html

Windows 7 – Booting from a VHD – Gotcha

John Workman — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 10:19:52 GMT

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/workdog/archive/2009/10/17/135524.aspx

Unfortunately, after spending way too many hours trying to make this work, I just learned that you can not setup Windows 7 to boot from a VHD with Windows 7 professional, only Ultimate and Enterprise. This isn’t a show stopper, but it’s definitely a setback. I really wish I started with Ultimate to begin with. This was a big waste of time. I was getting: "License error: Booting from a vhd is not supported on this system"

For those pursuing this, here’s a good article:

http://www.markwilson.co.uk/blog/2009/10/native-boot-from-vhd-on-a-windows-xp-computer.htm

One thing that I had to change was, after “Attach VDISK”, I had to type:

SELECT PARTITION=1

I was getting an error saying no partition was selected. I also had to change from drive x to y, as it said x was already used.

Windows 7 - Booting from a VHD

John Workman — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 09:42:12 GMT

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/workdog/archive/2009/10/14/135472.aspx

I’m attempting to create a duel boot on my laptop using a VHD of Windows 7. I heard you could do this, but then I found this great article on http://www.SevenForums.com that describes it in great detail - How to Create and Attach a Virtual Hard Disk in Windows 7.

I’ve already created the VHD of Windows 7. That seemed extremely painless, but extremely unintuitive if it wasn’t for this article. I believe you have the ability to map to your original hard drive as a network share.

The great thing about this is that you can run the VHD as if it’s a physical hard drive. You do not have to reserve part of your resources for the host. The ideal situation in my mind is to a separate virtual for every member of the family, with a common network share. If you buy a new box, you can just move the VHD to the new box. If one of the kids gets a virus, you just rebuild their VHD, not yours. Sounds ideal, with out exception…. You need a license for each. I haven’t checked yet, but I’m hoping it’s like vista ultimate where you can have multiple virtual on one license as long as it runs on the same box.

I’ll post more as I go through this.

Cheers,

John Workman

http://geekswithblogs.net/workdog

SharePoint Conference

John Workman — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 10:25:37 GMT

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/workdog/archive/2009/10/08/135373.aspx

Are there any other GeeksWithBlogger heading to the SharePoint Conference?

Global Agenda Mission: Pwning for a Cure - Nov 8th

John Workman — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 11:22:49 GMT

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/workdog/archive/2008/10/29/126376.aspx

For those of you in the Atlanta area that are big time gamers, here is your chance to get a sneak preview of a great first person shooter game that is being developed in Alpharetta, GA. If you live in the area, you should definitely check this out.

Some good friends of my at Hi-Rez Studios are putting together a a chance to get a sneak preview at there new game, Global Agenda. This event is organized to raize mony for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. I am a part of their Alpha Test, which we play every Thursday and Sunday. The game is awesome. It is amazing how much additional functionality comes out every week. I get my tail kicked most of the time, but I have a lot of fun. The other Alpha testers are awesome, but every once in a while I get lucky and kill one of them. Here's a snipet from their press release, followed by the link:

Mission: Pwning for a Cure will be held at Computer ArenA in Roswell, Georgia on Saturday, November 8th from 12-5pm. The event, co-sponsored by the Georgia Department of Economic Development's Film, Music & Digital Entertainment Office, will include hours of Global Agenda matches, game development seminars, a silent auction, raffles, prizes, music, and food. Hi-Rez Studios will also provide attendees with the unique opportunity to register for the invitation-only At-Home Alpha Testing Program and join the Global Agenda community.

http://www.hirezstudios.com/hi-rez_press5.html

TVTonic and the Olympics Rocks!

John Workman — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 10:58:04 GMT

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/workdog/archive/2008/08/18/124535.aspx

I've finally arrived!!!

Three years ago as we were building our house I had the whole thing wired with CAT-5. Everyone said I was crazy since WiFi was working so well. I responsed with, "yeah, WiFi is great for my laptop, but when I'm streaming my TVs through my computer, I'll be happy it's hardwired".

For the past year I've been streaming my movies to my XBox 360, and that's been great. None of that compares to the excitement I've had using TVTonic to download the Olympics and stream them to my XBox. With two young kids, I've missed a lot more than I wanted to. I saw part of the opening ceromonies, but I missed all the cool parts that everyone at work was talking about. During my digging to find videos online, I found TVTonic. This absolutely ROCKS!!! I was able to select which events I want to watch (Opening Ceremonies, Swimming, etc.) and it began downloading it all. Then, as new events take place, it records those too. It's like having a Tivo that will go back in time. The picture quality is very good, and I don't have to sit at my computer to watch it, although I could. It plays through Vista Media Center, which I then hit through the MC Extender.

If there are any events that you missed and still want to see, check this out. You won't regret it!

Microsoft BI Conference 2008

John Workman — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 10:19:57 GMT

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/workdog/archive/2008/08/18/124533.aspx

It's official! I'm now registered for the BI Conference 2008 in Seattle from October 6-8, 2008. I'm very excited about this event. It looks like there are going to be some good sessions, although I was hoping they would some MDX sessions. Looks like you have to wait for PASS Community Summit 2008 for those. The likelihood of me swinging a second trip to Seattle a month later is slim to none.

If there are any other GWB members that are planning to be there, let me know. It would be great to meet up.

SlickEdit

John Workman — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 12:01:48 GMT

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/workdog/archive/2008/06/17/122910.aspx

I am one of the fortunate ones who had the opportunity to evaluate SlickEdit. I happened to choose the Visual Studio plug in, as I use exclusively Visual Studio for development. My first thought was, “Where is it?” This tool is integrated with Visual Studio so well that you think it is part of the product. Obviously my second question was “What hasn’t Microsoft bought them and included it in their product?”

I’m not as much of a hard-core coder these days, but I still find myself using Visual Studio on a daily basis. Some of the things that I found really helpful were the “Show Diff” and the “RegEx Evaluator”. I am thrilled about the show diff functionality. VS 2000 had a windiff feature, but for some reason MS left that out of 2005. I have an old dev box that I terminal service into to do file diffs because it still has VS 2000. Thanks to SlickEdit I can stop that practice.

I know there are a ton of other features that I am looking forward to exploring. This product has a nice “SlickEdit Tools Assistant”, which is one of the better help systems I’ve seen in a software produce. As I dive deeper, I’ll keep you updated with any cool features I find, as well as anything that I think needs improvement. So far, I like what I’ve seen.

Xobni for Outlook Now Available to All

John Workman — Tue, 06 May 2008 05:30:15 GMT

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/workdog/archive/2008/05/05/121914.aspx

I received a broadcast email today from Xobni announcing that they have released Xobni for Outlook to the masses. You can download it here: http://www.xobni.com/download

and read about it here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/05/technology/05xobni.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

To give you a little understanding of the people behind Xobni, I want to fill you in on my experience. I've had a beta copy of Xobni installed on each of my three PCs. My home PC is runs Vista Ultimate and Office 2007. This PC runs with two profiles (myself and my wife). I ran into some issues with Xobni if you shut down outlook, you couldn't re-open it unless you go to task mgr and kill it. For this reason, I un-installed it from my home pc. During the uninstall it asked for a free form text of why you were un-installing it. Being a good beta user, I filled it out. A few days later I received an email from Matt Brezina, co-founder of Xobni. He asked they could set up a call and talk through the problems I was experiencing. I was so impressed with their drive for quality, that I agreed. I ended up having an hour long call with Greg Thatcher from Xobni, during which I let him remote control my PC, review log files and do some testing to make sure he fully understood my issue. During this time he started digging for more information around performance and other user experience areas. I have never seen a beta program that was this dedicated to getting it right. I can't begin to express the amount of respect I have for these guys. What an awesome organization!

Xobni - Photo idea

John Workman — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 12:06:25 GMT

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/workdog/archive/2008/03/13/120507.aspx

One of the things that I think is unusual about Xobni is that they have a place for photos in the corner. Who is going to take the time to configure all of these. In my opinion, no one. So here's my idea... Link this to Email2Face. I don't think there is a hugh number of people in their database yet. If products like this begin to link to it, it will help it to grow and both groups will benefit.

Xobni - Invites available

John Workman — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 12:01:22 GMT

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/workdog/archive/2008/03/13/120506.aspx

I'm really enjoying Xobni. If you haven't tried it yet, I highly recommend it. I have a few additional invites I'm willing to share. First come first serve. Leave a comment if you are interested.

Xobni - First Impressions

John Workman — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 10:39:17 GMT

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/workdog/archive/2008/03/10/120446.aspx

After using Xobni for a full day at work, I am very excited. I've turned several friends onto it and they love it too. I was disappointed for the first few hours as I thought it wouldn't update all of my history, but slowly it seemed to do that. It is truly an impressive application.

Few things missing... it needs to better display the contact info. It will show me cell phone numbers for folks in my contact list, but I have to right click and view their contact info to see the other numbers. I expected all of them to show up automagically. If the data is in my contact list, it should pull it.

With Outlook 2007, I have my to-do bar on the left. Now my Xobni bar is there too. It would be nice if I could dock each toolbar like you do in visual studios. I would like to have Xobni at the top and my to-do bar underneath, not side by side.

Thanks guys, I'm digging it!

Community Credit Prize Winner #15

John Workman — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 10:20:28 GMT

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/workdog/archive/2008/03/10/120444.aspx

I won Stupid prize number 15 in the Community Credit February contest. I never thought I would be so excited to be in 15th place, but I was. I am getting a copy of Microserfs. 15th place would be more disappointing if there weren't so many rock stars out there raking in the points. 15th place is awesome! :)

Xobni - Day One

John Workman — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 11:28:08 GMT

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/workdog/archive/2008/03/09/120408.aspx

I've finally downloaded Xobni for my Inbox. (see link on my blog). I've been hesitant to put it on my work laptop, until I heard that Microsoft is backing this. So far it looks awesome. I'll give it a few days and write a review.

Blackberry Curve - USB Drive - for file copy

John Workman — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 11:48:52 GMT

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/workdog/archive/2008/02/29/120113.aspx

I copied a bunch of movies on to my blackberry using Media Studio for Blackberry. I have a 2 gb card in it, so I can fit 4 movies at high quality. I had this great idea. I found a female to USB Female A To USB Mini Male B 5 Pin Adapter on Amazon for $6, and I thought I would be able to store additional movies on my thumb drive and copy them to and from my blackberry without having to connect it to my laptop. Sound perfect, doesn't it. Unfornately the USB Drive isn't "plug and play" on my blackberry. I stil think this can be done, I just haven't figured it out yet. I think one of the problems is that the blackberry doesn't put out power like a laptop/pc does. I also thought this would be great if someone had a file on their USB Drive to give me I could just plug it into my BB and copy it over. No need to go back to my desk. Oh well, nice try, huh.

If anyone has figured this out, please enlighten me.

PerformancePoint - Resizing Parameters

John Workman — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 10:50:13 GMT

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/workdog/archive/2008/02/29/120110.aspx

One of the things that used to drive me crazy with PerformancePoint was that I could only fit two drop down parameters on the top of a dashboard. I finally found this post that explains how to adjust it. It works great. Then tonight, I was trying to do it again and I had to search forever for it, so here it is. Preserved forever.

If you need to change the width of the parameter drop downs in PerformancePoint Server 2007, check out this link.

http://blogs.msdn.com/performancepoint/archive/2007/12/18/working-with-the-monitoring-css-files-to-adjust-settings-in-deployed-dashboards.aspx

PerformancePoint Server 2007 - Documentation Map

John Workman — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 10:21:41 GMT

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/workdog/archive/2008/02/28/120072.aspx

Aseem Nayar posted a Documentation Map for Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 at the following link: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/performancepoint/HA102422371033.aspx

It's great to see that the documentation is starting to flow.

Here's a link to some training videos too. http://www.microsoft.com/business/performancepoint/resources/training.aspx

How to rename a server (continued)... With Proclarity

John Workman — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 10:06:55 GMT

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/workdog/archive/2008/02/28/120071.aspx

As I wrote about yesterday, I am in the process of building out virtual images with PerformancePoint. I figured out how to rename the server and have both SharePoint Services and PerformancePoint work (see yesterday's post.)

Today, while working with the server, I realized that none of my Proclarity views were working. I tried several things and finally I gave up, uninstalled the Proclarity Analytics Server and re-installed it. This worked great in getting it up and running. Only took about 10 minutes. Once that was taken care of, the Proclarity reports still didn't work. I thought I had a great idea and I set everything up as http://localhost instead of the server name. So I went through every report on my server and pointed them from the older server to localhost. This was a slow process, but once it was done everything worked great.... FROM my machine. As soon as I ran the dashboard from another box, it failed. The moral of the story is, DO NOT use localhost as the server name in Proclarity reports. I thought I was saving myself some effort if I clone the VS. I then had to go back and reset them all to the new server name. This is a pain because I did it all by hand. Soon I will document the steps to save this off as a BSWX file and modify the xml to change the urls. This is a much more efficient way to go, especially if you have to do it twice.

Once this was done, everything worked great. If I find a better way to handle Proclarity, I'll re-post. In the meantime, this works, so give it a try.

How to rename a server running SharePoint and PerformancePoint

John Workman — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 11:22:43 GMT

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/workdog/archive/2008/02/27/120039.aspx

I'm in an running Virtual images for development and demos that are stand along PerformancePoint Servers. They are running Windows Server 2003, SQLServer 2005, SharePoint Services 3.0, and PerformancePoint Server. I have a development environment and a DMZ environment that can each run 5 instances of the Virtual image. To make this setup easier, we created a "gold" image that we will use as our baseline image for each of the environments.

If you try to do this, what you will quickly find out is that all hell breaks loose when you go to rename the server. SharePoint hates it. PerformancePoint hates it. It's just a bad seen. fortunately, I'm managed to figure this out. And fortunately, I managed to document (most of it). I have to repeat this process several more times, so I will update this post when I find things that I failed to document.

How to rename a server running SharePoint Services 3.0.

Prior to renaming the server, you need to run a command line exe called stsadm.exe.

To do this, go to start=>run=>cmd
Navigate to c:\program files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\BIN
Type the following command
- Stsadm.exe -o renameserver -oldservername <oldServerName> -newservername <newServerName>

Now you can go to My Computer => Properties and rename the server.

Obviously you need to reboot after this.

Now that you are up and running, open a browser and go to your SharePoint site.

Change administrator name

Click the down arrow next to Welcome …. My Settings

Modify the account name (currently has local box\name)

How to rename a server running PerformancePoint

There are multiple places that you need to change to update the server name. If you are in a position like I am with the demo boxes where everything runs local, I am setting everything to "localhost" instead of the server name. This only works well an environment like mine where these are dev boxes and everything runs stand alone on the same box. Otherwise you want to update it with the new server name. Here's a list of the places I wrote down. I'll update this if I find any that I'm missing.

Navigate to c:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\virtualdirectories\80
Open web.config
Find and replace the old server name with the new (or localhost in my case)

Navigate to c:\program files\microsoft office performancepoint server\3.0\monitoring\ppsmonitoring_1\webservice
Open web.config
Find and replace the old server name with the new (or localhost in my case)

Navigate to c:\Program Files\Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server\3.0\Monitoring\Preview
Open web.config
Find and replace the old server name with the new (or localhost in my case)

Navigate to c:\Program Files\Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server\3.0\Tools\MonitoringConfiguration
Open monitoringConfig.xml
Find and replace the old server name with the new (or localhost in my case)

Like I said, with this many changes, it likely that I forgot to writedown one, but hopefully this gets you started.

The next step is to go through and update all of our datasources in PerformancePoint to point to the new server name (or localhost if appropriate)

Users Give PerformancePoint a Big Thumbs-Up (Part 2 of 2)

John Workman — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 21:32:13 GMT

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/workdog/archive/2008/02/20/119796.aspx

Here's part two of Stephen Swoyer's article on PerformancePoint Server. Great quotes! :)

http://www.tdwi.org/News/display.aspx?ID=8804

http://www.esj.com/business_intelligence/article.aspx?EditorialsID=8804

Users Give PerformancePoint a Big Thumbs-Up

John Workman — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 10:19:46 GMT

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/workdog/archive/2008/02/13/119558.aspx

Check out this article that I'm quoted in, "Users Give PerformancePoint a Big Thumbs-Up". I've seen it under two links:

http://www.tdwi.org/News/display.aspx?ID=8799

http://www.esj.com/business_intelligence/article.aspx?EditorialsID=8799

It's a nice piece by Stephen Swoyer about PerformancePoint Server.

Freezing your hard drive

John Workman — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 09:28:37 GMT

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/workdog/archive/2008/02/08/119405.aspx

Today has been an interesting day. The hard drive on my laptop died. It has been acting up for a few days and I kept saying "I need to back everything up before it dies". Well, that didn't happen and it's dead. I went down to our IT group to see if that had any utilities to help me out. Make a mental picture of this.... It's around 4pm on a friday afternoon. I walk in and say that my hard drive is dead. They said, "Oh, we should put it in the freezer for the weekend and we'll check it out on monday." I trust these guys, but at a glance this looks like "don't bother me on friday afternoon, let's wait until monday." Well, there is no way I can wait until monday, so I brought the drive home and figured I could try it out here. I just googled this and found out that there is some truth to this method. Right now as I type this email (on my desktop), my hard drive is in the fridge "chillin out". Wish me luck! I'll let you know if this works out for me.

Blog.workdog.org now points to geekswithblogs.net

John Workman — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 10:03:30 GMT

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/workdog/archive/2008/02/06/119359.aspx

Thanks to the great new features by Jeff, http://blog.workdog.org now points to http://geekswithblogs.net/workdog.

Thanks Jeff !!!

New Year with PerformancePoint Server

John Workman — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 11:44:57 GMT

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/workdog/archive/2008/01/16/118624.aspx

One of my new year's resolutions was to start blogging on a more regular basis, and here I am on January 16th with my first post of the year. It's amazing to look back over the past year and see how much technology has changed, at least in my little world. I have been an xml geek for the better part of this century (sounds more impressive that way than saying around 8 years). I still love xml, but begun exploring several other paths over the past 12 months (ESBs, Ajax, Silverlight, Orcas, etc.) before landing in my new technology home of PerformancePoint Server and SharePoint. The sad part about deep diving into some many areas is it doesn’t leave much time to blog about it, but now that I am settling in on PPS and SP, I’m planning to focus most of my on-line rambling on these areas. I want to start out by saying PerformancePoint Rocks! Working with this product makes you look like a rock star. People can’t believe how well it performs, how great it looks, and how powerful it is. That said, none of it would be possible without the awesome cube designs by my buddy James. It’s still a new product with a lot of room to grow. But even in its infancy, it’s still better than anything else on the market. Thanks Microsoft. You guys have hit a home run with this one. Lastly, I love all the new work Jeff has added to GeeksWithBlogs. I’ve got to study up and get my tags right. I appreciate the tutorials you've started on the blog. I'm going to look them over soon. Belated Happy New Year to all.