Easier STSADM Tips by Adding PATH into the Environment Variables

Sometimes you don’t realize that you’re wasting your every seconds just for typing and finding where’s STSADM located. Everytime you remote on a Sharepoint Server, and needs to call STSADM, you type this before calling STSADM…

What a waste time…. eh..! You can try to add the path of Sharepoint 12 Folder, to Environment Variables. Here’s how….

Click Advanced system settings…

Go to tab Advanced and then Environment Variables…

in the System Variables, find PATH, and add the 12 BIN sharepoint folder, usually at “C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\BIN\”, and don’t forget to add “;” delimiters (without quotes).

Missing Site Actions Menu after Sharepoint Backup or Restore

A couple weeks ago, I ran into a problem, it’s so annoying and stupid. I have a scenario that I must copy an entire Site Collection and restore it on another server. After I tried to backup all of site collection and then restore it on another server, all seems good and nothing’s error found. But when I hitting the front page, and click Site Action, some of menus are missing!

After a few days, I found that both of the source and destination server, are locked by default when you try to backup or restore by using STSADM. and you can check the site whether it’s locked or not by using this command.

and this command does unlock the site…

And, voila……. the Site Actions menu shown up again….!!!

Merging Two Virtual Hard Disks with Virtual Server 2005

You can merge two Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) into one VHD by using Virtual Server 2005. But as far as I know, you can only merge VHD with Differencing VHD type. What is that? Differencing VHD actually two VHD, with one as the parent which holds the most common and shares the same configuration with the children VHD. And the other one is the child, which holds the changes in every events.

By merging this two VHD, you can increase a better performance for your Virtual Machine. You can try to merge this two hard disk by accessing Virtual Server Administration WebSite, and click Inspect under Virtual Disks.

After that, choose the Full Path of the Differencing VHD to Inspect, and click Inspect.

Click on the “Merge virtual hard disks”…

You can choose whether to merge with the parent virtual disks, or just create a new merged VHD, is up to your choice. And then click Merge.

And that’s how to do it…