Sharepoint Services have stopped working

[Simon Dullingham]

I have run into a recent problem with Sharepoint Services. I will try and be
brief initially and provide more information as needed. I would appreciate
any help that can be provided!

Info:

1. Sharepoint was working fine since I installed it a year ago. It has
worked properly without problems with Project Server

2. I performed some upgrades on the SQL server which were "Recommended" by
the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer. I cannot recall explicitly what I
did (a month or so back)

3. I upgraded all Windows Server 2003 machines to Service Pack 1.

4. I made no changes to the Project Server configuration

Problems:

1. The home page now says there are problems with Sharepoint. UNder risks
and Issues it says: "There is a problem establishing a connection with the
Web server running Windows SharePoint Services. Contact your system
administrator."

2. The risks and issues pages in Project Server display each project. When I
click on a project to get its risks/issues then the following message is
displayed:

The documents, risks and issues features in Project Web Access use Windows
SharePoint Services.

There is a problem establishing a connection with the Web server running
Windows SharePoint Services. Contact your system administrator.


3. Sharepoint itself appears to be working fine. If I go to the home site,
it works. If I go the admin site, it works fine. If I go to a specific
project site within sharepoint, it works fine. If I call up the issues and
risks within the project site, it works fine. Basically, all elements of
sharepoint are working correctly

4. So, my conclusion is that it is the integration betweem Sharepoint and
Project Server that is the problem. It would be nice to know which user is
being called inside the .asp page to request information as I think this has
to be the problem.

There are no messages in any Event Logs, and to frank, I am stumped. I know
it must be something that I changed, but I do not seem to be able to
pin-point it.

Thanks in advance

Simon

 

[Oscar J. Piñón]

I have the exact same problem!

Please help.

Oscar Piñón

 

[Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]]

Simon:

Look at the account that you're using in COM+ to make the connection with
WSS. This account may have become locked, the password may have expired, or
it's record in COM+ may have become damaged. In Project Web Access Admin, go
to the Manage Windows SharePoint Services page and try to re-establish the
connection. If it fails, work your way backwards to the account.

 

[Simon Dullingham]

Gary,

Thanks. I am unfortunately still stumped:

I am using the account name "MSProjServ" as described in the documentation
(Domain User rather than a local user). I have logged in locally to the
Sharepoint server and gone to the virtual server administration page.

On Project Web Access, I have gone to admin/Manage Windows Sharepoint
Services. There are 3 steps to perform validation procedure:

1. Verify central administration URL is correrct (hit test URL). That works
fine

2. Verify Windows account xxxxx\MSProjServhas sharepoint administrative
access - one, and confirmed (by logging in locally)

3. Verify public documents site is valid. Done and works fine

I have used the PSCom+.exe program and set the WSS to be xxxxx\MSProjServ.

It still doesn't work!

I have gone to the server machine, and run dcomcnfg. Now, not having another
machine as a reference, I do not know how it should be, but I saw soemthing
that looked strange:

Under My Computer/Com+ Applications, there is a COM object called "Microsoft
Office Project Server WSS Admin component". If I right click it, and hit
properties, then identity, it runs under xxxxx/MSProjServ account. It has an
idle timeout of 3 minutes, which I guess means that if nothing needs it, it
shuts down. What I think is interesting, is that if I right-click it, and
select start, it does not. Anyway, I'm probably barking up the wrong tree
here.

Do you have any other thoughts?

One that I had is that in the PSCOM+.exe routine, there is an option to
delete the com application. If I do that, can I do a reinstall? Will that
fix it if my COM object has been broken?

Thanks,
Simon

 

[Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]]

Simon:

The WSS account needs to have privileges on the database. Many people
accomplish this by adding it to the Local Admin group. How have you provided
this access? When you updated the systems with SPs, did you by chance apply
Office updates to the system? Applying WSS service packs typically require
you to rerun WSSWIZ after application.

--


Gary L. Chefetz, MVP
"We wrote the books on Project Server"
http://www.msprojectexperts.com

For Project Server FAQs visit
http://www.projectserverexperts.com

For Project FAQs visit
http://www.mvps.org/project

 

[Simon Dullingham]

Garry.

The MSProjServ is a member of the local administrator group on the WSS server

There are no office applications (other than project serve) running on the
server, other than Project Server itself. I have therefore not running
officeupdate on this machine (though maybe I did for Project Server - but
cannot recall)

I tried running WSSWIZ last week but it just says everything is installed
OK. That said, I still went through the set up process once more and nothing
changed. It still is as broken as before.

Any other thoughts?

Thanks,
Simon

 

[Guest]

Gary obviously knows far more than I do about this issue, but I believe you
might look at the following items

1. The MSProjServ account is used to connect ProjectServer to the database.
It is a SQL account, not a domain account.
2. The WSS admin account needs to be specified through the PSCom+ utility,
found in \Program Files\Microsoft Office Project Server 2003\BIN\1033
3. That WSS account needs to be a domain account. It needs to be in the
Local Admin group on the WSS server.

Hope this helps. I will depend on our MS MVP to correct my faulty
understanding.

John Willard
Sr. Architect
VA Dept of Transportation

 

[Simon Dullingham]

John,

thanks for the input. IN my case, I use the MSProjServ account as the WSS
admin account. The other accounts (MSProjectServerUser and MSProjectUser) are
the "roles" in the ProjectServer database in SQL.

I used the PScomPlus utility - no good

Also, my WSS admin account was an local admin on the WSS server.

So, having not been able to fix this, I went down the dangerous road (for me
anyway, as I had not done this before). I deinstalled WSS and ProjectServer
from their server. This leaves the SQL databases in place.

I then reinstalled WSS and Project Server, and used the manual method of
reconnecting to the databases. And lo and behold - fixed.

In my humble opinion, something got broken in the COM/SOAP interface between
ProjectServer and WSS. I'm not sure how, or why (Windows Server 2003 SP1,
Enhanced IE Security, who knows).

Thanks for everyone's effort in trying to help

Simon