Sharepoint Search Error 0FF1CE15-013A-0000-0000-000000000000 -Error loading type library/DLL.

I was setting up the sharepoint 2013 server and configured the sharepoint search in one of the app server(1 WFE, 1 APP and SQL server)

Everything was working as  expected, but last Sunday our infrastructure team has done windows update in APP server and SQL server(it seems to be other update as well).

After that there was strange behavior in the farm, like while running the jobs it was throwing access denied error, health usage report etc. So we asked infra team to revert the APP server snapshot to before update installed.

They have reverted the snap shot of the server and once they hand over the server, I checked 
the all the service application which we configured earlier, and Search service application was crashed due to server update happened in the APP server where search is configured and I was getting below error when I open the search service.

The Execute method of job definition Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPServiceInstanceJobDefinition (ID a41c8bc6-6ee7-4039-b171-277686fc0b96) threw an exception. More information is included below.  Unable to cast COM object of type 'Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.MSSITLB.CGatheringManagerClass' to interface type 'Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.MSSITLB.IGatherManagerAdmin3'. This operation failed because the QueryInterface call on the COM component for the interface with IID '{0FF1CE15-013A-0000-0000-000000000000}' failed due to the following error: Error loading type library/DLL. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80029C4A (TYPE_E_CANTLOADLIBRARY))."

I thought my search service got screwed up and I need to create it from scratch. But I don't want to do that since everything was working as expected, so I just wanted to deep dive into the issue with ULS Log, Event viewer.

There was one clue was available in the error message i.e, 0FF1CE15-013A-0000-0000-000000000000

When I just saw this id, I assumed its  some thing related to Registry entry, either its having issue while accessing the Registry key or key might be corrupted(I was under assumption that whole registry got corrupted, luckily that was not the case)

Then I opened the Registry 

1) windows + run, type regedit it will open registry application(Make sure you open the registry with admin access else you wont be able to open)

2) Search for this specific key in the registry - Note here flower brackets are very important while searching else search return multiple value

3) This will be located under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Interface folder

4) There will be 3 folder under this as like below

Above pictures shows the path of the key.

5) Here you need to select {0FF1CE15-0001-11B0-0000-000000000000} again curly braces are important and search under the registry folder HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\TypeLib\

Please follow the path as depicted in the below screen shot.

As  we can see here its having the value "C:\PROGRA~1\MI95D8~1\15.0\Bin\mssrch.dll\1" which we can say its corrupted or its not having the proper location path.

This key value we need to change it to "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Servers\15.0\Bin\mssrch.dll\1" and save the entry.

Couple of notes:

1) These changes needs to be done in the server where search is configured, in my case I have done it in app server

2) After registry changes its recommended to restart the machine, please plan for that

3) After this registry changes search service  application will loose all its crawl history, need to run full crawl(basically search will not be in working condition, so we need to run full crawl)

4) In my case I have not created new search service application, existing application worked without any issue.

5) Query processing component will throw error if we search for items, in that time its required to start below services

• SharePoint Server Search
• SharePoint Search Host Controller
• IIS  Reset in all servers(Optional)

Loading this assembly would produce a different grant set from other instances

Recently in our test environment we encountered this error when we tried  to open the site.

I thought it might be some cache issue or db might got locked for that specific site. So I tried to open sharepoint central admin site then it started throwing this error.

Just before 5 minutes all the sites were working and after that suddenly it stopped after I deployed one of the dll to gac and did an iisreset.

I thought it might be due to latest version of the dll its breaking and I reverted the older version of the dll, but still I was getting the error.

Then I started trouble shooting issue by keep on checking one by one, is there any windows update installed recently, but there was no updates.

So service packs. no language packs no windows updates. Then I check the control panel to see is any other tools/software installed recently, luckily there was tool called Microsoft monitoring agent which is used for SCOM alert.

Our admin team have upgraded SCOM 2012 to SCOM 2016 which is culprit in my case.

Why this will break the application/sites?

Yes why this should break the application. As everyone is aware sharepoint is very complex and brittle in nature. It doesn't allow any other assemblies or any other tool to come in its way.

In our case this monitoring tool tried to inject their assemblies in sharepoint worker process and it caused all the worker process to broke.

In order to fix this issue I asked our admin team to uninstall the SCOM client and install it manually with NO APM=1

This exercise needs to be done in all sharepoint server where its installed.

If any one of you faced this issue and googled out there are plenty resources available which suggest to update registry entry or update web config file of the application.

All the above workaround doesn't work and even if it works we are loosing some thing which we are not aware what might it will break in the future.

Better to avoid all those and tried to verify if any tool/software has been installed recently based on this you can take the decision.

Sharepoint Deprecated Feature for SP 2016

With the new release of SP 2016 Microsoft has decided to deprecate few features which are available in the previous version of Sharepoint.

Some of the features which are deprecated were really useful as point of dev perspective.

1) Sharepoint Foundation:

Which is free version of the previous SharePoint that included most of the core functionality and architecture provided by the commercial editions of SharePoint. Not sure about the reason behind may be microsoft looking for more licenced version of the sharepoint which generates the revenue for them :)

2) Stand Alone feature(Sharepoint setup)

Its hard to believe this feature has been deprecated, which is very useful for developer to set up standalone environment in hyper-v/vm. Stand alone feature install and configure every thing for us.

But this has been available in another format as MinRole feature during installation and choose one of the available install options. Using min role we need to install SQL Server and need to run the SharePoint Server 2016 farm configuration wizard.

3) Excel Service

Excel Services functionality is now part of Excel Online in Office Online Server, so this feature has been deprecated but if we migrate the from sharepoint 2013 to 2016 and to retain excel services we need to have Office Online Server with Excel Online

4) ForeFront Identity manager

FIM to synchronize between Active Directory and SharePoint. FIM got replaced with MIM(Microsoft identity Manager) tool to synchronize the data, by default process is Active Directory import. 

5) Sharepoint BI capabilities - Details copied from MSDN

If you want to use Microsoft SQL Server Power Pivot for SharePoint or Microsoft Power View for SharePoint for BI solutions with SharePoint Server 2016 you must install the Power Pivot or Power View add-ins for SQL Server 2016 RTM. The SQL Server 2014 (SP1) Power Pivot for SharePoint and Power View for SharePoint add-ins cannot be deployed or used withSharePoint Server 2016. To deploy these add-ins you need to upgrade to SQL Server 2016 RTM. For more information, see New and improved features in SharePoint Server 2016. The following business intelligence features are available with SharePoint Server 2016 when you download SQL Server 2016 RTM:

6) Tags and Notes

Social feature which was introduced in sharepoint 2010 has been deprecated or microsoft recommends not to use this feature  since it wont be supported from next release onwards

7) STSADM

Those who started working with MOSS are fan of STSADM command until they started using powershell script and its commendlets. Microsoft recommends to use powershell commands to perform daily admin activity.
Support of stsadm will be available for previous version of the sharepoint

Extending Sharepoint WebApplication

What is extending sharepoint webapplicaiton?

Let's take an example to understand this concept.

Assume we have two sharepoint site but the content of both sites are same. Here the question raises do we need to create the same content for both the sites or is there any possibility that sharepoint infrastructure provide us some mechanism to handle this in elegant way.

so here comes the concept of extending the sharepoint web  applicaion:

Expose the same content to two different set of users with different URL's and with different authentication will use  the concept of extending  sharepoint  web applicaiton.

Each  Web  app will assign  to corresponding IIS  web site and when it get extended it will create another web applicaiton and inturn it create new IIS web site as well.
The extended web app will use the same content DB as with  the main web app(here we can call it as parent web applicaiton), since it will create its own  IIS web site it will be having its own Web.config  file.

This concept will be handy when parent site use windows  authentication and extended site uses form based  authentication

Note: By default extended web applicaiton uses the  same authentication as with the parent  site, but we can change  it as per the  requirement.

Uninstall DLL from Gac using Powershell

In some cases we might face issue while deleting the dll from GAC( usually it will say its in use by some process) and it will always annoying, to over come this here is small powershell script which will be handy.

Set-location "Folder path of the DLL"          
[System.Reflection.Assembly]::Load("System.EnterpriseServices, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a")          
$publish = New-Object System.EnterpriseServices.Internal.Publish          
$publish.GacRemove("FolderPath\DLL.dll")          
iisreset

When do we need sharepoint full crawl?

Most of the developers have encountered this question, when exactly do we need to run the sharepoint full crawl? Why does incremental crawl is not enough.

Here are the following scenarios where full crawl is mandatory.

a) Search  service application created  in the farm and configured with content source(Its obvious)
b) New content source added/created.
c) Adding new  managed property/ updating the existing managed property.
d) After CRUD operation of Crawl Rules
d) If  search index  throwing errors
e) The  credentials of  user account that is assigned to the default content access account have changed
f)  Sharepoint Service pack installed

Atleast for  the above scenarios its  mandatory to run  the full crawl else  search does not return the required results :(

How to create and import thesaurus in SharePoint Server

Before deep dive into how to create and import first we will discuss about thesaurus

What is Thesaurus?

Its same as synonym or as per google :) "a book that lists words in groups of synonyms and related concepts"

Before jump into the details, we will make clear that it will be used in sharepoint search.

Why it is  important in sharepoint world?

As explained above this is used in sharepoint search, so many people can search for the same data using different key world.

ex: If user wants to search for Laptop, then the user can try with different keywords like shown below :

Lap top
Laptop
Laptops
Lappy
Lap-top

In all of the above cases its referring to Laptop only, but how our sharepoint will understand these keys will be explained in the post

The situation becomes even difficult when people use acronyms :(

ex: HD TV
Hi Definition TV etc

In all of the above cases, search doesn't return any of the record even when user is referring to the same type/record

How to overcome this issue?

In Sharepoint 2013 we can easily create and upload the thesaurus(csv format) that contains synonyms for search phrases and acronym as well.

How to create it?

First we need to identify which are thesaurus we need to use in the system like as explained for Laptop example

1) Then open notepad(We can use CSV also)

2)  In the notepad enter the columns name like Key,Synonym,Language
Note: It should be at the top and there is no  space between 3 words and it should be separated  by comma.
ex:Key,Synonym,Language

3) In the text editor add new line and enter a term or a phrase, a synonym for that term or phrase and a two letter language code. Use commas to separate the phrases, for example Lap-top,Laptop,en

Note: Here Language is optional 

Repeat the same steps for entering multiple term as like below

Lap top,Laptop,en
Laptop,Laptop,en
Laptops,Laptop,en
Lappy,Laptop,en
Lap-top,Laptop,en
Lap Top,Laptop,en
Lap Tops,Laptop,en

Save the file as .csv with UTF-8 encoding.

Now our thesaurus are ready for importing into Sharepoint.

How to import into sharepoint environment?

1) Open a SharePoint 2013 Management Shell with Admin account(Search service application administrator)

2) In the command prompt  enter  the  following command

$searchApp = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication 
Import-SPEnterpriseSearchThesaurus -SearchApplication $searchApp -Filename \\sharepoint2013\\D$\Searchthesaurus\Thesaurus.csv

Here file path is given in the UNC format. This commandlet expects the file path in this format.

Now our thesaurus are part of search, even if the user search for any of the term search will return the proper results

Things to consider:

When we import  the thesaurus  existing  thesaurus will be overwritten.

There is no export functionality to take backup of the  existing thesaurus
(Its good to maintain the thesaurus files in external system where we can update the new thesaurus)

After  importing  thesaurus it will reflect  immediately, there is no delay in reflection

Its always better to update the existing copy of the thesaurus file so that all old entries will be available.

Issue might encounter  and steps to fix the issue

1) If we run the commandlet without admin access it might throw exception

2) Search needs to be properly configured

3) Make sure whatever term you are mapping its coming in the search result or not before running the scripts
ex: Laptop word  is coming or not please verify before running this.

4) After running the commandlet if you are seeing the below error in ULS then we need to restart Search and Timer service
Failed to start the flow: Microsoft.ThesaurusDeployment. Exception: System.ServiceModel.FaultException: Cannot start flow. The admin service is unavailable.

5) Make sure Primary host controller is enabled in the front end server where this scripts is running