Working with a customer, we noticed a large number of errors in the Windows Application event log for error 6398.  The errors look like: The Execute method of job definition Microsoft.SharePoint.Diagnostics.SPSqlDeadlockDiagnosticProvider (ID c020fbe2...

In July 2010, I switched roles from Developer Platform Evangelism to become a Premier Field Engineer for SharePoint .  My role in DPE was amazing as it afforded me time for activities that I love, like participating in user groups, speaking at conferences...

I was working on a customer problem and needed a very large list to try to reproduce a problem.  I typically fire up Visual Studio and create Yet Another Console App.  You know, one of the hundred or so “ConsoleApplication1” projects that litter...

This post demonstrates how to use the JOIN syntax in CAML. A customer pinged me asking about how to write a JOIN query in CAML.  Honestly, I haven’t done this since in a long time, so it took awhile to shake off the cobwebs.  I tried to make...

Working with a customer, we saw that they had 20 or so web application pools, each with 1 web application each.  The software boundary for SharePoint 2010 is to have no more than 10 web application pools .  Because each application pool can...

This post shows how to download a WSP from SharePoint 2010 using PowerShell. Background A customer of mine had a scenario where they needed to download a WSP from SharePoint 2010.  In the Central Administration screen, a link is not available for...

This post shows how to set up a SharePoint environment to explore the multilingual user interface (MUI).  Background I admit to being a typical American.  When I write applications, I hardly ever use resource files to support any language other...

This post will show you how to ensure Add-PSSnapin "Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell" has been executed in all PowerShell windows. Background I have been doing a lot of work in PowerShell lately, and found myself frequently in the PowerShell...

This post will show how to create DNS entries from a file using the DNSCmd.exe tool. Background I have a kind of edge case that I am trying to troubleshoot for my customer.  They have a lot of sub-companies, and they created a web application per...

This post shows how to set the log fields for IIS web sites programmatically. Code is attached at the end of the post. Background I have a customer that has many web applications, and we need to set the IIS log fields to do some investigation. James...

This post will show how to make a call to HttpWebRequest asynchronously from a web part and wait on the result or time out. Years ago, I was fortunate to meet Jeff Richter and attend a session he gave on .NET performance . He discussed I/O completion...

In previous posts, I talked about using WinDBG to debug.  Another incredibly handy tool to have at your disposal is the Debug Diagnostic Tool, or DebugDiag 1.2 .  This tool can be used to automatically capture a memory dump when an exception...

I am working on a project to create newsletters to send to my customers, and experimenting with a few ways to collect the information so that I can easily author the newsletter later.  One way that I am experimenting with is to use the Tagging feature...

I recently performed an in-place upgrade of SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2010, and the upgrade appeared successful.  I tried to run a few STSADM commands and got the following: System.MissingMethodException: Method not found: 'Void Microsoft.SharePoint...

You will often want to control who has access to use SharePoint Designer on your site.  There are a number of ways to control who has permission, you will need to determine the combination that applies to your intended use of the site and your governance...

In this post, I will show how to modify the page layout for Wiki pages in SharePoint 2010. There are many reasons you might want to edit the page layout for a Wiki page.  For instance, you might want to move the Modified By and Last Modified Date...

In this post, we show how to query Active Directory using out of box tools as well as custom code.  Since joining Premier Field Engineering, I realized that an essential part of understanding SharePoint requires an understanding of Active Directory...

I have been working on a project that requires creating a content type programmatically.  Admittedly, it took me awhile to figure it out.  You can create a content type for SharePoint declaratively in a feature using XML similar to the following...

ASP.NET developers have enjoyed using user controls and server controls in their development since ASP.NET was created.  This post talks about user controls and server controls and shows how to implement them in SharePoint. User Controls A user control...

An interesting question was posted on one of the distribution lists today. “The client wanted to look into this MSDN drag and drop typed left navigation bar to work on Sharepoint 2010, does anyone make this work or have idea about this?” Click the control...

The IIS 6 Resource Kit Tools includes a tool called TinyGet to quickly issue an HTTP request to a page from a command line, and it works with IIS6 and higher (yes, you can install the resource kit tools on an IIS7 machine without problems). Why would...

In this post, we’ll see some steps about how to troubleshoot a production SharePoint site using WinDBG and PssCor2.dll.  For an introduction to setting up your environment and getting started, see my blog post “ Intro to WinDBG for .NET Developers...

When your code goes into production, you usually no longer have access to its binaries when they reach their final destination.  Whether that is someone’s desktop or a set of servers, you no longer have access to directly observe your code and its...

A customer asked how they could add jQuery to every page in SharePoint. They wanted to modify core.js on the disk, but of course we all know that Microsoft does not support modifying files that reside in the _layouts folder . Of course there are supported...

I recently got a question from a customer about utilities to include on their development machines.  My view is that you should trust your developers and let them install the tools they need.  However, some devs don’t have managers who trust...