Looks like the folks at MS have finally released the fix for the annoying Service Pack 2 Expiration Date bug (see below posts).

The installation instructions and links to the downloads of the x86 and x64 fixes can be found here.

You can install this fix either before installing SP2 or after.  If you install before SP2 it will prevent the expiration date from being activated.  If this fix is installed after SP2 it will remove the invalid expiration date that was set from SP2.

Details on the bug fix is found on the SharePoint blog here.

Enjoy! - M

MS recently posted here that SP2 has a bug that incorrectly activates the Product Expiration Date within MOSS.  Basically this means that 180 days after applying SP2 SharePoint will expire, as if it was a Trial Installation.  They're working on a resolution to this fix and hope to have it out PDQ.

They've posted a manual workaround here but this link appears to be "broken" for now, but should be up within 48 hours.

Note the affected products: SharePoint Server 2007, Project Server 2007, Form Server 2007, Search Server 2008 and Search Server 2008 Express.

Stay tuned as more info comes out...

- M

Hot off the presses at the MS SharePoint Team Blog is the preliminary requirements for SharePoint 2010.  As most of you probably have known, MS has been saying for a while that, going forward, 64-bit is the path and 32-bit is going the way of the dodo.  On top of that, you will also need to either be running 64-bit SQL Server 2005 or 2008.

More and more tidbits of information are coming to light...stay tuned...

-M

Find it here!

As reported on the SharePoint Team Blog, SP2 will be out on April 28th.  Plan all your patch windows accordigly, as well as spin up your new virtuals with it.  I'll be playing with it to see if updating the instructions for the clonable environment change. - M

Service Pack 2 for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 due to ship April 28th

As you can see from the title, I'm a little delayed here, but, as said, better late than never, eh?

The February CU is out.  Take a peek over at the MS SharePoint Team Blog here for the details.

- M

I basically had an issue with the December CU, in that after installing it I could not access my sites or the Shared Service Provider Admin site ('issue' sounds like an understatement, eh?).  Luckily, I was doing this in my DEV environment. Always, always, always test out patches and such like this first before going to your PROD environment.  I'm probably preaching to the choir here, but just making sure.

So, what was up?  Well, in following the steps to install the CU, it was failing in an area related to the SPSearchDatabaseInstance (found that in the logs).  Running the update through the UI Configuration Wizard resulted in the same (failing at Step 8).  After some digging, I found that it looked like it was related to the Windows SharePoint Services Help Search.  This service handles search tasks for nonindexed content such as Help.  So, what was done to resolve this?  Here's what I did: (note: your mileage may vary)

1. Open up Central Administration to its Home page
   
2. Click the Server in the Farm Topology list (my DEV setup has all on the same server)
3. Click Stop for the Windows SharePoint Services Help Search Service
4. Open up SQL Management Studio, log in, and locate the Search Database for the above service
5. Delete this database (yup, I had to delete it)
6. Close the SQL UI
7. Re-run the Configuration Wizard (It may take a little time, but at this point it should complete)
8. Upon succesful completion, return to CA
9. Go back to the Configure Windows SharePoint Services Search Service Settings page (above Steps 1, 2 and 3)
   
10. Enter the values in the fields that you had had in there originally (I used the DB name that I had deleted just before)
11. Click <OK>
12. The service should now be started

After doing this my sites returned.  I'll post updates here for any issues that come out of my testing.

- M

Microsoft has announced the December Cumulative Update for Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 on the Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog.  Make sure you read the whole post before applying as there's information related to earlier reported errors. - M