In an earlier post (http://powerpivotgeek.com/2010/03/04/installing-the-right-version-of-sharepoint/) I spoke about the way that PowerPivot determines if you are on the right version of SharePoint. Cory Retherford reported some errors and after investigating it for a few days we found the solution.

Here is [...]]]> (Well, maybe you are – maybe you aren’t . . . How can you check directly?)

In an earlier post (http://powerpivotgeek.com/2010/03/04/installing-the-right-version-of-sharepoint/) I spoke about the way that PowerPivot determines if you are on the right version of SharePoint. Cory Retherford reported some errors and after investigating it for a few days we found the solution.

Here is some more info:

The SQL setup rule checks for the guid of installed SharePoint. We have two guids that correspond to the SharePoint Server Enterprise Edition SKU. If the guid in the registry doesn’t match one of our guids and a farm is configured and the bits for SharePoint exists then the rule is triggered.

What is the value of the following registry key?

SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\14.0\InstalledProducts\{90140000-110D-0000-1000-0000000FF1CE}

The installed guids we are looking for is either one of these:

"D5595F62-449B-4061-B0B2-0CBAD410BB51"
"88BED06D-8C6B-4E62-AB01-546D6005FE97"

If your guids do not match these then we believe that the installation is not SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Edition and you see a validation error.

It turns out that in Cory’s case, there is an interesting SharePoint bug that you might run into. There was a bad early SharePoint Server 2010 FIS distribution made available for download, see KB2143810 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2143810), that impacted the guids installed on the system. Cory installed the right ‘version’ of SharePoint 2010, but not all of the features were activated and the wrong guid was being reported.

At least now, if you get a “wrong version of SharePoint installed” error, you have something to check.

Hope that helps.

Embedded Analysis Services [...]]]> Recently ran into this situation: Customer installed the wrong PowerPivot bits on their machine. They were running on a 64-bit OS with Office 2010 x64, but installed PowerPivot for Excel 32-bit. Everything installed OK, but when they clicked on the PowerPivot tab in Excel; then the PowerPivot Window they received the following error:

Embedded Analysis Services Engine: Could not open embedded PowerPivot data
Click OK
Embedded Analysis Services Engine: Could not open embedded PowerPivot data
Unable to load the VertiPaq engine (HRESULT 0×0800A03EC)

Solution: Uninstalled PowerPivot for Excel and installed the x64 bit version of PowerPivot. Everything now works.

After uninstalling PowerPivot for SharePoint, Excel Services and other features in the PremiumSite feature will be disabled. At a certain level for “new server”, this makes sense since turning on and configuring of Excel Services et. al. was part of the [...]]]> (With my thanks to Fernando Delgado, our excellent setup dev for working up this solution)

After uninstalling PowerPivot for SharePoint, Excel Services and other features in the PremiumSite feature will be disabled. At a certain level for “new server”, this makes sense since turning on and configuring of Excel Services et. al. was part of the “new server” installation. But for “existing farm”, this is a huge NO-NO and will cause considerable aggregation. Fortunately it is easy to fix. In order to re-enable the feature in all the sites in the Farm where it was previously enabled you just need to follow a simple set of steps. If there is a small number of sites, just re-enable them manually with the regular UI. If you would like an automated way, then the following step will scan through the SQL Server log file, pull out those sites that were disable and re-enable them (this is great if you have a large number of sites or if you don’t know which sites to enable manually).

Note: All these steps must be run as administrator

1. Go to %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Sql Server\100\Setup Bootstrap\Log\
2. Look for the directory with the modified date corresponding to your uninstall procedure. If no other SQL component else has been installed or you have not run repair, then this should be the directory with the latest date.
3. The directory names will be something like YearMonthDay_HourMinutesSeconds choose the newer one and navigate to that directory.
4. Copy Detail.txt to a known location like C:\LogFiles
5. Copy the file Post–KJUninstall.ps1 (see below) to the same location as the Detail.txt file
6. Start the SharePoint 2010 Management Shell as the Farm Administrator account.
7. From the shell run the following command (assuming both files are in C:\LogFiles): (as an administrator)

PS C:\LogFiles> C:\LogFiles\Post-KJUninstall.ps1 –UninstallLogFilePath C:\LogFiles\Detail.txt

That should reactivate the PremiumSite feature for all the sites where it was previously enabled.

File: Post-KJUninstall.ps1 :

Param($UninstallLogFilePath)
$file = $UninstallLogFilePath

Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell

$powerPivotFeatures = @("1a33a234-b4a4-4fc6-96c2-8bdb56388bd5", "e9c4784b-d453-46f5-8559-3c891d7159dd", "f8c51e81-0b46-4535-a3d5-244f63e1cab9")
$premiumSiteId = "8581a8a7-cf16-4770-ac54-260265ddb0b2"

#Remove PowerPivot features
foreach($featureId in $powerPivotFeatures)
{
    if(Get-SPFeature | where {$_.Id -eq $featureId})
    {
        Write-Host "Found feature $featureId"
        Uninstall-SPFeature -Id $featureId -force
    }
}

# Verify if the premium site feature was indeed removed
$premiumSiteFeature = Get-SPFeature | where {$_.Id -eq $premiumSiteId}
if($premiumSiteFeature -eq $null)
{
    # Re-install the feature
    Install-SPFeature -path PremiumSite
}

switch -regex -file $file
{
    "de-activating feature"    {
                    # This will return every entry in the file for feature deactivation
                    $Url = $_.Split() | ?{$_ -match "http://([a-zA-Z0-9_\-]+)([\.][[a-zA-Z0-9_\-]+)*(\:[0-9]+)*(/\S*)?"}
                    #Remove the period at the end
                    $Url = $Url.Substring(0, $Url.Length – 1)
                    # Match the Guid for the feature
                    $Id = $_.Split() | ?{$_ -match "([0-9a-fA-F]){8}-([0-9a-fA-F]){4}-([0-9a-fA-F]){4}-([0-9a-fA-F]){4}-([0-9a-fA-F]){12}"}
                    if(!($powerPivotFeatures -contains $Id))
                    {
                        Write-Host "Re-activating feature $Id on site $Url"
                        Enable-SPFeature -Id $Id -Url $Url
                        trap
                            {
                                Write-Host "Could not Re-activate feature $Id on site $Url"
                                Write-Host $("Exception: "+ $_.Exception.Message);
                                continue
                            }
                    }

                    continue
                }
}

Important : If you install the 32-bit version of Excel 2010, you must use the 32-bit version of PowerPivot. If you install the 64-bit version of Excel 2010, you must use the 64-bit version of PowerPivot.

PowerPivot [...]]]> For those who would looking for specific downloads of the PowerPivot for Excel 2010 RTM bits , here they are:

Important : If you install the 32-bit version of Excel 2010, you must use the 32-bit version of PowerPivot. If you install the 64-bit version of Excel 2010, you must use the 64-bit version of PowerPivot.

PowerPivot for Microsoft® Excel X86 Executable (32 bit) (or here: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=186058&clcid=0×409)
PowerPivot for Microsoft® Excel X64 Executable (64 bit) (or here: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=186059&clcid=0×409)

Enjoy!

Windows 7 is only supported for PowerPivot for Excel; Windows 7 is not a supported OS for PowerPivot for SharePoint

Several months ago we purposely made the decision to [...]]]> Recently I had a conversation with one of our excellent beta testers and I want to make sure that everyone was clear about running PowerPivot on Windows 7.

Windows 7 is only supported for PowerPivot for Excel; Windows 7 is not a supported OS for PowerPivot for SharePoint

Several months ago we purposely made the decision to not support Windows 7 on the server. If you do try it, then good for you (I like adventures too) but you are totally on your own. Please don’t post any server-side question to the forums and other support channels. We cannot be asking “oh, is this running under Windows 7” with every bug report. We don’t support Windows 7; we haven’t tested under it; and we don’t even do adhoc “oh, I wonder what will happen here”. We don’t know where or if Windows 7 breaks anything. The SharePoint story with Windows 7 is pretty clear. They provide guidance on a “standalone”, non-production SharePoint installation. The problem is that PowerPivot requires a “Farm” and “Complete” installation of SharePoint Server. So we don’t believe that we have adequate test coverage to support an edge configuration for SharePoint. PowerPivot for SharePoint requires a server OS, i.e. either Win2K8 SP2 or Win2K8 R2.

For the client, we have a totally different story. Windows 7 is a supported (and the preferred) platform for Office, Excel and PowerPivot for Excel.

I appreciate that this is an issue with some folks. And I understand where you are coming from, but we cannot help it. Windows 7 is an unsupported platform for the PowerPivot server components.

Obviously if you have gone down this path, we’d love to hear about it. If you have the spare bandwidth, feel free to play, and report back – but we cannot support you.

Clear? Enough said. (And now we return you to your regularly scheduled programming)

Thanks.