Recovering Test farm after failed SP3 updating

Question

Last week I tried to update our test wss 3.0 farm from SP2 to SP3 in order to use the Permissions reporting tool that came along with the Sharepoint Administration Kit. However, the update failed and now the only site available is the Central Administration one.

The Windows Sharepoint Services Search has run with errors since the update try, as seen in the timer job state page in CA.

When I try to the Sharepoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard it says that the update had errors and must be run again, however it stills issues errors.

The home page for my main site shows then a white page throwing out the following error:

Server Error: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink?LinkID=96177

I had some pending contendbs recovery to make in my farm, but I have not been able to do so.

Is there any possibility I could recover my test environment? if not, How can I reinstall wss 3.0 given that the wizard mentioned above will not let me pass through without completing the update?

EDIT: Here is first error from the upgrade.log file:

[SPManager] [ERROR] [19/12/2012 11:49:53]: Invalid object     name 'MSSCrawledPropCategory'.
[SPManager] [ERROR] [19/12/2012 11:49:53]:    at     System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection.OnError(SqlException exception, Boolean     breakConnection)
   at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlInternalConnection.OnError(SqlException exception,     Boolean breakConnection)
   at System.Data.SqlClient.TdsParser.ThrowExceptionAndWarning(TdsParserStateObject stateObj)
   at System.Data.SqlClient.TdsParser.Run(RunBehavior runBehavior, SqlCommand     cmdHandler, SqlDataReader dataStream, BulkCopySimpleResultSet bulkCopyHandler,     TdsParserStateObject stateObj)
   at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand.RunExecuteNonQueryTds(String methodName,     Boolean async)
   at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand.InternalExecuteNonQuery(DbAsyncResult result, String methodName, Boolean sendToPipe)
   at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand.ExecuteNonQuery()
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities.SqlSession.ExecuteScript(TextReader textReader, Int32 commandTimeout)
  at Microsoft.SharePoint.Upgrade.SPDatabaseAction.ExecuteSql(String sql, Int32     commandTimeout)
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.Upgrade.SPSearchDatabase_Bug748846_Action.Upgrade()
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.Upgrade.SPActionSequence.Upgrade()
    [SPManager] [ERROR] [19/12/2012 11:49:53]: Action 12.1.1.0 of  Microsoft.SharePoint.Upgrade.SPSearchDatabaseSequence failed.
   [SPManager] [ERROR] [19/12/2012 11:49:53]:    at    Microsoft.SharePoint.Upgrade.SPActionSequence.Upgrade()
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.Upgrade.SPManager.Upgrade(Object o, Boolean bRecurse)

Answer 1

As far as going back is concerned, your only hope right now would be the backups that they tell you to take before applying any service pack. The reason is because the service pack makes changes to the databases as well as to the file system as it applies. You also cannot simply attached old copies of the databases themselves because the farm itself is in a partially upgraded state where you have SP3 code in the file system.

However, since this is just an SP2 to SP3 upgrade, it is more than likely that this is a simple problem but you need to get to the actual error in order to make that determination. You will need to go through the event logs and SharePoint logs and the log generated by the update in order to find exactly where the update broke and the error associated with it. Once you have that, you should be able to quickly find the solution

Answer 2

I had a similar problem last week where I did an upgrade from SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2007 SP2. My customer had created custom views and custom stored procedures in the SharePoint SQL database.

For more details: http://wp.me/p1fg2Y-55

In your case look for either a view or stored procedure with the name MSSCrawledPropCategory but within a scheme different than dbo