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Removing Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

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As Sharepoint becomes mainstream, sometimes is nice to remember the little things. Recently we had a case where we had to do just that. We removed Sharepoint Services 3.0 and reinstaled it, only to notice the same info on the webpage. We did a little digging and came across an article from Microsoft pointing out that when removing Sharepoint Services 3.0, you have to manually remove the Windows Internal Database. With this version, there’s no way to remove it through the GUI and no user notification, so you have to use the msiexec.exe command to do it.
If you are running an x86-based edition of Microsoft Windows Server 2003, use the following command line to remove Windows Internal Database from the computer:
msiexec /x {CEB5780F-1A70-44A9-850F-DE6C4F6AA8FB}
CALLERID=ocsetup.exe
If you are running an x64-based edition of Windows Server 2003, use the following command line to remove Windows Internal Database from the computer:
msiexec /x {BDD79957-5801-4A2D-B09E-852E7FA64D01}
CALLERID=ocsetup.exe
The full Microsoft article (KB920277) can be found here.

Group Policy best practice analyzer tool

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This tool has been available for about 1 year or so. Many people are aware of it, but we talk to many other IT folks that either chose to ignore it or are simply unaware of it.
According to Microsoft- You can use the Microsoft Group Policy Diagnostic Best Practice Analyzer (GPDBPA) tool to collect data about an environment’s Group Policy configuration. For example, you can use this tool to analyze a Group Policy configuration for the following purposes:
• To search for common configuration errors
• To discover and to diagnose problems
• To collect data for archiving
The account that you use to run the tool must have the appropriate permissions to access both the Active Directory database on an environment’s domain controllers and the SYSVOL file structure that is maintained on those domain controllers. Additionally, the account must have local Administrator permissions on the Group Policy client.
There are two additional prerequisites for using the GPDBPA tool:
• The Microsoft .NET Framework version 1.1 or a later version must be installed on the computer on which the GPDBPA tool is installed.
• The Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) service must be running on the environment’s domain controllers.
Our Active Directory Manager has a robust built-in Group Policy management module. Contact us for more info about this or any of our other solutions.

Quick note about Group Policies – Server 2003 vs. Server 2008

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A major issue in Server 2003 implementations of Group Policies is the huge amount of space they take up. For each Policy, there’s a corresponding .ADM file. The .ADM file supports only the English language, and it’s also 3.5MB in size. Not much right? When you consider that for each policy you have, there’s a new .ADM file and another 3.5MB, you can see how this can get out of control. For example, let’s say you have 200 policies– that’s 700MB of extra data that you have to back up. Even if you only have 100 policies, that’s still 350MB.
Server 2008 offers a new way of dealing with this issue. In Server 2008 you can use ADMX files, which are based on XML- more lightweight by comparison. With the new ADML files, you now also have multiple language support.
The Active Directory solutions we provide will help with your Group Policies management. Contact us for more information.