How nice to be able to see some of these templates in action!

I have been using SPS for a good while at work. Yesterday, it started to act up on me. Our SPS site is in a different domain (no trust between them) than our desktops. Normally, a separate set of credentials is required to access the portal or any of the team sites. The symptoms were:

• Anytime I tried to access the portal or any team sites from my desktop, I would get a 500 error
• If I tried from another desktop, it worked fine
• If anyone tried from my desktop, it worked fine

It sounded like a profile problem to me in that it was only my account on my desktop that didn't work. My account on other systems worked properly.

I tried some steps to help with the problem. I tried:

• Clearing my cookies
• Clearing my Internet temp files
• Clearing my SSL State
• Closing all browser sessions each time I tried something
• Doing a magic reboot

Nothing worked, so I did the one thing I didn't want to do, I killed my profile and rebuilt it. Everything works again.

Updated Jun 17, 2005.

I ran into this issue again. I was bound and determined to not have to recreate my profile yet again, so I did some more digging. This time I was able to fix it. I went to Start, Settings, Control Panel, User Accounts. I selected my account name, clicked on the Advanced Tab, clicked on the Manage Passwords button, selected the name of the SPS site, and then clicked remove. After closing up the dialong boxes and open windows, I tried the site again, it prompted me for my password information, and all was well.

I installed SPS and got it up and running properly. The SQL connection was a major problem as I was trying to connect it to a SQL cluster with multiple SQL instances installed. When I tried to configure SPS to connect, I used the cluster name but kept forgetting to put the instance name along with it so it kept failing. Anyways, I finally figured it out and SPS was up in a few minutes after that.

SPS is new to the company, and I really had no desire to teach everyone how to use it. So, I downloaded the SharePoint Portal Server (SPS) 2003 Training Kit from Microsoft's website at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=bca45a99-e420-47fd-8aea-a8743735c710&DisplayLang=en.

I tried to run the install and kept getting odd errors about how it could not connect to the SPS server. Finally, I turned off SSL, and it installed properly. Somebody ought to fix that.

After a little fussing, I finally sent out invitations to everyone and made sure to mention that the training location was up and available for them to do some digging around and learn how to use SPS. I also sent everyone an email and put a link on the main SPS page for the Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) training on Microsoft's website at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/evaluation/demos/wss/wss.html.

The end result? I had very few end users (have I mentioned that I hate end-users as they keep screwing up my network?) come to me with any questions, and the company is just loving SPS now that it is available. I must say that I have never seen such quick uptake on a new product before. It is a testament to the great work of the SPS team at Microsoft to put together all of the online training and to make the product so easy to use.