As many of you know, when a Windows Update takes place we all hold our breath, cross our fingers, and hope for the best. We then can spent the next several hours (or even days) fixing all of the issues related to that update. Whew, when we are done we have a mini celebration and then wait for the email with the next update.

So last week, MVP Zubair Alexander wrote an article for MCP Magazine called Windows Update Troubles, Or What to Do When the Mother of All Patches Fails. I hope this provides some assistance in those late night hours.

My SharePoint server had displayed error messages in the Event Log for months. I just figured that as long as it was still working I wouldn’t need to worry about the errors. Well, on Monday it stopped working. So that has a way of working its way up the priority list. I finally had to give in and and attempted to fix the issues. I was receiving the LoadPerf error Event ID:3012 and Perflib error Event ID: 1008.

What I discovered was that when you use the System Monitor tool, some counters may be missing or do not contain counter data. The base set of performance counter libraries may become corrupted and may need to be rebuilt. You may also need to rebuild any custom (.NET Framework application created) counters or any extensible counters.

This behavior happens if certain extensible counters corrupt the registry, or if some Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI)-based programs modify the registry.

If you use the lodctr /r command from the command prompt, you can overwrite all Performance counter registry settings and Explain text, replacing them with the configuration defined in the file specified. For more information on event log monitoring or system auditing visit this Microsoft site.

The performance strings in the Performance registry value is corrupted when process Performance extension counter provided.

So, with all of the buzz going on around Windows 2008 I thought it would be appropriate to talk about Windows 2008 and SharePoint. I stumbled across a whitepaper today called “How to move a SharePoint Server 2007 32Bit environment to a 64Bit environment on Windows 2008” written by Steve Smith and Penny Conventry. It covers most of the basics of the move itself, but also covers a lot of the new features in Windows 2008. I’ve heard rumors that the next version of SharePoint will only run on 64Bit, but I would do a little more investigating before you determine the validity of the rumor. Either way, it looks like it is the direction Microsoft is taking so I’m sure it is only a matter of time before all their development is 64Bit based.

Since I work in a Virtual PC environment most of the time, on of the things I do after I install all of my software is disable any of the services that are not absolutely required. Although I have not found a hard and consistent rule as to which services I can disable based on the software I am running, I did find this table that I thought was interesting and gave me enough information to decide for myself. You can find all of the details at TechGalaxy.net. Although these are recommended settings, you will need to take each servers configuration into consideration.

·  Display Name  is how it is displayed in the Services Control Panel
·  Process Name is the name of the Process running in the background (displays in Task Manager by hitting Ctrl+Shift+Esc).
·  Dependencies describe what services this service needs for proper functionality.
·  DEFAULT Server is what runs by default on Windows 2000 Server.
·  “SAFE” Configuration is the configuration that 95% of the people will be able to use with little or no side effects. It will also minimizes the amount of “errors” that is reported in the Event Viewer.

http://www.blackviper.com/WIN2K/servicecfg.htm