Delete an orphaned Project server database entry from the config db in sharepoint

The following query allows us to get rid of an orphaned object id for a project server database when we see errors during provisioning of PWA sites.

Run this against the config DB

SELECT OD.ID AS DepID,OD.Name AS DepName, O.ID AS ObID,O.Name AS ObName
FROM Objects AS O
INNER JOIN Dependencies AS D ON O.ID = D.ObjectID
INNER JOIN Objects AS OD ON D.DependantID = OD.ID
WHERE O.Name like '[INSERT-DB-NAME-HERE]'

Copy the DEPID that is returned and execute the following command

STSADM -o deleteconfigurationobject -ID <>

Unrecognized section in web.config file

Ran into this error while provisioning SSP. Blew away the whole SSP and all web application associated with it. Created a new web app and a new SSP but browsing the page was showing errors " an unexpected error has occured". Checking the event viewer showed an unrecognised section in the web.config at drive\program files\microsoft office servers\web services\root. Took a back up and deleted this section. The SSP came up fine after that an everything was a breeze.

"User cannot be found" while provisioning SSP

Breaking my head over this error, I tried all possible options for this including entering the service account password again for all application pools and resetting IIS countless number of times. Finally, ran into a blog post which asked to check the site collection admin on the central admin site and the SSP admin site. Apparently, the service account must be the site collection admin for the admin sites (central admin and default SSP admin if already created).

Service Unavailable message in IIS when rendering MOSS sites

This is something that I found while troubleshooting W3SVC errors. I was getting a service unavailable message for any site that I hit using in our SharePoint environment. Thought initially it is an application pool crash and set up the dcdiag tool to capture dumps, but later learnt that "service unavailable" is not picked up by this since dumps are created only if the website takes time to render and service unavailable is almost instantaneous. Tried by just reentering the service account password in all the application pools and an IISRESET later the site came up. Strange but this did work.