SharePoint (and Project Server) Shenanigans

Recently I was asked to take a look at a SharePoint 2010 system that was having a few problems. Looking at the patching status it was still running SPS2010 RTM, so the 1st job was to at least get SP1 installed, then the latest CUs on top, and so the fun started…

I downloaded the appropriate service packs, and kicked off the foundation SP1 install and got the following.

The error appeared straight away, no upgrade log was written, nothing in the ULS logs and nothing in the Windows logs.

I used /? switch on the end on the Service Pack file to get the usage options.

 

sharepointfoundation2010sp1-kb2460058-x64-fullfile-en-us.exe /?

 

Next I used the log option to have a look at the output of the Service Pack install

C:\patches>sharepointfoundation2010sp1-kb2460058-x64-fullfile-en-us.exe /log:c:\
patches\sp.log

 

There is quite a lot of information written to the log file, but nothing that pointed to the reason of the failure, next was to extract the patch and see which patch file was causing a problem.

C:\patches>sharepointfoundation2010sp1-kb2460058-x64-fullfile-en-us.exe /extract
:c:\patches\sp

the c:\patches\sp folder now contains the extracted patch files and the EULA text file

Running the patch wsssp1-x-none.msp was giving the following error.

So the Service Pack wouldn’t install because one of the patches inside it didn’t realise that SharePoint was installed, interesting as the error I would have expected to if SharePoint wasn’t installed would have been this one…

I tried running the Config Wizard, but that didn’t help either, after checking with one of colleagues who knows all about packaging software he thought that the failing msp was probably looking for a specific registry key or value.

So I decided to try running a repair from Control Panel, to reset all the original Server settings while not effecting the content or configuration databases (this process ran for quite a long while)

Then I re-ran the Config Wizard, (which now asked about removing the server from the farm).

Finally, after all this the Service Pack would finally install.

Another day done in the world of SharePoint.