HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESystemCurrentControlSetServicesMsahci

For detailed instructions, see Microsoft KB Article 922976.

You can check the controller is in AHCI mode through Device Manager:

AHCI Enabled

First, let's begin with the basics. A lot of people are not aware of the simple syntax rules when performing a SharePoint search. For a full guide, refer to Building Search Queries on TechNet, but for the juicy bits only, read on!

• Find one or more words: simply type in the words, separated by spaces. Search will look in content and metadata, giving you the most relevant results first (putting emphasis on closeness of the words and number of occurrences etc.).
• Search for a phrase: type in at least two words, separated with spaces and enclosed by quotation marks e.g. "sharepoint server"
• Include or exclude terms: if you must have a word included in your results, prefix it with a plus symbol. Similarly, if it must be excluded, prefix with a minus sign. For example: +sharepoint -exchange would return results with sharepoint in the content but not exchange.
• Property filters: any crawled or managed properties can be used in queries with the syntax property:value. Many are available out of the box (OOTB), such as filetype or author. With property filters inclusion is implicit so property:value is the same as +property:value. Here is an example, the search SharePoint backup filetype:doc author:"Mike Cox" returns Word documents containing the words SharePoint and/or backup in the content or metadata, authored by Mike Cox. The screenshot below illustrates this. Since the include is explicit you only need to prefix a property:value search term with a sign if you want to exclude results.

Search Results

By simply knowing the above, users can search in a much more intelligent fashion. Exact phrases is the obvious one, but the include and exclude as well as the property filters are very powerful. There is also nothing wrong with searching again once your result set is displayed. I might search for a couple of words then realise I only want to see the newer Excel formats. No problem, just add filetype:xlsx to the terms into the search box and go again!

Now the basics are out of the way, here are a few ideas of what you can do to really make Search work in your environment. It also holds possible clues as to future posts!

• Create new Managed Properties for property:value searches or, better still, to use in custom Scopes and Advanced Search Box Web Parts.
• Add Best Bets with synonyms so that users immediately see relevant internal and external links for queries they search often.
• Create different search results pages for different scopes. Why not federate a Google Blog Search with a scope designed to include technical articles written in house?
• Be inventive with Federated Search. How about creating a media search of your internal library and sending it to a results page that shows photos from Flickr in a Federated Search Results Web Part? Remember to take care over copyright, though!
• Heavily customise Advanced Search to meet the needs of your business. If you align Advanced Search with your own taxonomy it will become much more powerful.

I hope this post has got you thinking about Office SharePoint Server 2007 Search. As a final thought, monitor the keywords users are searching for. Search shouldn't be ‘fire and forget’, it has to be constantly monitored, nurtured and improved. Hey, maybe one day those same people will say, “I wish finding things on the Internet was as easy as our Intranet.” Ok, perhaps that is a bit ambitious

If you want to log to a non–default database then simply open the SharePoint 2010 Management Shell (Start > All Programs > Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products > SharePoint 2010 Management Shell) and run:


$spUsageAppName = (Get-SPUsageApplication).DisplayName
Set-SPUsageApplication -Identity $spUsageAppName -DatabaseServer yourServer -DatabaseName newDBName -Verbose


All this does is retrieves and stores the DisplayName property for the Usage Application in a variable (first line) then configures the Usage Application with the new database name. Adding Verbose makes my output (shown below) a little more helpful and interesting!

Output of Set-SPUsageApplication

A few things to note:

• These instructions were tested on SharePoint Foundation RTM, but should also work on SharePoint Server 2010.
• This was on a new install of SharePoint Foundation so part of my post–installation configuration. If your environment is already up and running, it may not be so simple.
• The account you run this as must be a local admin on the SharePoint server and also be a member of the fixed server roles dbcreator and securityadmin on your SQL server (the install account is a good choice).
• I actually used a SQL Alias instead of server name (see screenshot) and it works fine. This isn't a production system so I am not giving anything confidential away
• The old database is not deleted; if you want rid of it then you will have to do it yourself!

Head over to the download section on NVIDIA's web site and obtain the appropriate driver. Place it somewhere you can easily find it; the Downloads folder in my home area worked fine for me. The way I got the driver installed was to (broadly speaking) following the instructions found in a post on the Ubuntu Forums, specifically TheRawGod's post (thanks ).

First I blacklisted some drivers. To do this open a terminal and use the following commands. Note that I like to use vim (Vi–IMproved) but you will need to install this (sudo aptitude install vim). If you want something really straightforward, just use nano. I also tend to kick off with a sudo su so I can just do everything as root.


sudo su
cd /etc/modprobe.d/
vim blacklist.conf


Add the following to the end of the file:


blacklist vga16fb
blacklist nouveau
blacklist rivafb
blacklist nvidiafb
blacklist rivatv


Drivers to blacklist

Once completed, save the file. The next step is to update GRUB so it will prevent the nouveau driver from loading automatically at startup. To do this, perform the following:


cd /etc/default
vim grub


Now add GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=”nouveau.modeset=0″ at the bottom of the file.

Disable nouveau driver

Save the file and invoke update-grub. Reboot and you should be presented with a horrible looking low-res login (which is good, for now!).

Next you will need to install the NVIDIA driver you downloaded earlier. Press Ctrl-Alt-F1 to bring up a Teletype terminal and login. Then run the following commands (replace the location for that of your download) to get the driver installed.


sudo su
service gdm stop
cd /home/mike/Downloads
sh NVIDIA-Linux-{driver version}.run


Follow the on–screen prompts to install the NVIDIA driver (just accept the defaults and always choose to continue). If you are told that you have an X server running and have definitely stopped gdm, try the following:


rm /tmp/.X0-lock


Once the driver is installed, there is a final step to make sure the Sony display panel is properly recognised by NVIDIA's driver. Run the following commands:


cd /etc/X11
vim xorg.conf


Add the following lines to the bottom of the file, immediately before the “Display” SubSection:


Option "ConnectedMonitor" "DFP-0"
Option "CustomEDID" "DFP-0: /proc/acpi/video/NGFX/LCD/EDID"


Note that I originally added this to the end of the “Device” Section, but a subsequent reinstall of the NVIDIA driver after a kernel update caused it to be placed in the section referenced above.

Edited Screen Section

Please remember that you will need to be root or use sudo to execute most of the above commands. I also found that after a kernel update, it is necessary to repeat the driver install from the point where I stop the Gnome Display Manager (run Ubuntu in low–graphics mode one time only, switch to a Teletype terminal, stop the Display Manager and reinstall the driver).

Simply copy the script below and save it to a .ps1 file of your choice. Please retain my comments at the top and, as always, use at your own risk! The deletion portion is quite destructive . You may also have to set your Execution Policy to a less strict setting, such as RemoteSigned, e.g.:


Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned


I have tested the script with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 SP2 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP2 running on Windows Server 2003 R2 SP2 (PowerShell 1.0). It should work fine for MOSS and WSS running on different Windows Server operating systems.

Here is the script:

# SharePoint Site Collection Backup Script
# Author: Michael Cox
# Version: 1.0
# Date: March 2010
# Contact: http://www.betteritsolutions.co.uk/
# Use at own risk, please retain these comments

# Create alias for STSADM
Set-Alias -Name exeStsadm -Value ($Env:CommonProgramFiles + "Microsoft SharedWeb Server Extensions12BINstsadm.exe") -Option Constant
# Specify maximum age in days for backup files
New-Variable -Name maxFileAge -Value 14 -Option Constant
# Get todays date, formatting as yyyyMMdd e.g. 20100224
New-Variable -Name todaysDate -Value (Get-Date -Format yyyyMMdd) -Option Constant
# Specify backup location and set log file location, folder must exist and be writable by account running script
New-Variable -Name backupLoc  -Value "S:Backups" -Option Constant
New-Variable -Name logFileLoc -Value "$backupLocsite_collection_backups.log" -Option Constant
# Specify Web Application
New-Variable -Name webApplication -Value "http://mossintranet/" -Option Constant

# Change to backup location and create folder, suppressing notification
Set-Location $backupLoc
New-Item $todaysDate -type directory | Out-Null
Set-Location $todaysDate

# Record backup start
Out-File -FilePath $logFileLoc -Append -InputObject $("Backup started at: " + (Get-Date -Format HH:mm` dd/MM/yyyy) + "`n")

# Enumerate Site Collections within chosen Web Application and store in a variable
[xml]$sitesXml = exeStsadm -o enumsites -url $webApplication

# Enumerates each site collection and performes an stsadm sitecollection backup against each site
$sitesXml.Sites.Site | ForEach-Object -Process {$backupFile = $_.Url.Replace('http://','').Replace('/','_') + ".bak"; exeStsadm -o backup -url $_.Url -filename $backupFile; Write-Host "Finished writing: $backupFile"; Out-File -FilePath $logFileLoc -Append -InputObject "Finished writing: $backupFile"}

# Remove folders that are older than the maxFileAge value
Set-Location $backupLoc
$tooOld = (Get-Date).addDays(-$maxFileAge)
Get-ChildItem | Where-Object {$_.PSIsContainer -and ($_.lastWriteTime -le $tooOld)} | ForEach-Object -Process {Remove-Item $_ -force -recurse; Write-Host "Folder $_ was deleted."; Out-File -FilePath $logFileLoc -Append -InputObject "Folder $_ was deleted."}

# Record backup end
Out-File -FilePath $logFileLoc -Append -InputObject $("`n" + "Backup ended at: " + (Get-Date -Format HH:mm` dd/MM/yyyy) + "`n")

Here is a screenshot of files created following a backup of a Web Application with two Site Collections and also the contents of the log file:

Screenshot after running script

Please let me know if this is useful and also feel free to make suggestions for improvements or bug fixes, if you find any.

I won't go overboard, but here are the relevant technical details: ASUS P5B Deluxe motherboard with Intel ICH8R onboard SATA controller and 3 x 250GB SATA HDDs. I used to have two of these in RAID 0 (yes, I have backups) but I decided that the performance benefits vs. just sensibly placing things on different drives wasn't worth the extra risk. So, for my reinstall I would be moving from RAID mode in the BIOS to AHCI mode.

I backed up everything, flashed the BIOS with the latest version (good time to do it when I am reinstalling anyway), set all my settings and flipped the ICH8R to AHCI mode. As I expected, my old XP install no longer booted as it was configured for RAID mode with the appropriate driver. Linux coped fine, though . I popped in the XP Pro SP2 CD, hit a key when prompted and watched the message: Setup is inspecting your computer's hardware configuration. After that, nothing. No chance to hit F6 or anything. Just a black screen. I even left it for ages in case it would finally realise it couldn't read the disks yet. No joy. Hmmm.

Basically, there seemed to be some issue with the fact that the setup CD could understand that there was an operating system installed but not properly read it and it was getting stuck. OK, no bother, whack in a Linux live CD and nuke the disks. In case you are interested, I like using badblocks in write mode but anything that destroys the partitions would do I expect.

Right, attempt number 2 (well actually a much higher number, but if you are reading this you don't need to follow my mistakes!): this time I get to the F6 prompt, add the AHCI driver from a floppy (drive hanging out of the side of the PC – why would I have a floppy drive on a modern PC?) and Windows sees the disks. Great! Actually, no. This time it sees 1 x 250GB disk and a 500GB disk that it cannot access (the old RAID array). Having selected AHCI in the BIOS and the AHCI driver this did surprise me. No problem, back in the BIOS and enable RAID then into the RAID BIOS and delete the array. Back in the BIOS again, enable AHCI.

Attempt number 3 and we have success! 3 x 250GB disks detected (after using the F6 option to add the driver) and I install Windows XP.

So in summary, if you want to reinstall Windows XP and go from one SATA controller mode to another, my tips would be:

• Break any RAID arrays in the RAID BIOS
• Delete any existing partitions on your disks
• Make the BIOS changes you require
• Boot to the setup CD and slipstream the correct driver

Simple when you know how! As an aside, I was installing from a SATA DVD drive and that caused no issues (I saw some people report that this is a problem). I know this wasn't part of the problem because I even had another 'donor' machine next to my desktop at one point so I could try installing from an IDE optical drive…


msiexec /i "VMware Tools64.msi"


VMware Tools Installed

Program Compatibility Assistant

After some digging around and Googling, I discovered that Search Server wouldn’t install on Server 2008 R2 without Service Pack 2. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear possible (at this time) to download it with SP2 so what do you do? I did a little experimenting and found out that you can slipstream the The 2007 Microsoft Office Servers Service Pack 2 (SP2) into the install. Note that the download page actually specifies the service pack will update Search Server. Here's how to slipstream it:

1. Open a command prompt, navigate to the location of the file SearchServerExpress.exe and run SearchServerExpress.exe /extract:SearchServer. This extracts (but doesn't install) Search Server Express to the folder SearchServer.
2. Download the 2007 Microsoft Office Servers Service Pack 2 to the same location as the install file for Search Server Express.
3. From the same command window, run officeserver2007sp2-kb953334-x64-fullfile-en-us.exe /extract:SearchServerUpdates (you will have downloaded the 64–bit version as Windows Server 2008 R2 is 64–bit only). This extracts the service pack files into the Updates folder of the Search Server install.
4. Run setup.exe from within the SearchServer folder

You should find that the Search Server install now runs happily without complaining and pauses for a period of time to apply updates towards the end of the process.

Happy searching!


DISM /Online /Enable-Feature /FeatureName:NetFx2–ServerCore
DISM /Online /Enable-Feature /FeatureName:MicrosoftWindowsPowerShell


Now you can launch powershell.exe from C:WindowsSystem32WindowsPowerShellv1.0. Although the path would suggest PowerShell 1.0, a quick Get-Host indicates PowerShell 2.0:

Get-Host output

A little more about DISM, for those that are interested. DISM is the "Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool" and can be used to perform various configuration tasks on offline or running images. Hence the /Online switch is used to tell DISM it must target the running operating system. The following command will list all features and their status (suggest you pipe it through more):


DISM /Online /Get-Features | more


Note that PowerShell requires .NET Framework 2.0, hence the first DISM command.

Thanks to Vincent Hu for his post on TechNet, which I finally found. There is a slight mistake, though, as there should be no space between /FeatureName: and the feature you want to install.