Improve performance of VMWare

For a while I am using VMware environments for SharePoint development projects. Last time, I was really struggling with performance issues. My host OS is Windows 7 (64-bit) with an Intel T7700 processor and 4 GB RAM. About every 10 minutes, the CPU of the virtual machine (Windows 2008 R2, 64-bit) was up to 100% caused by a variety of services (every time another one).

There are some improvements I have made which worked (at least) in my situation.

• Configuration of the virus scanner.
  Exclude the VMware files from real-time protection and for the ThreatSense-engine
• Add some parameters to the VMware configuration file (.vmx)
  - Disable page sharing (improves I/O). Add following line to the vmx-file:
  sched.mem.pshare.enable = "FALSE"
  - If you have enough free RAM for all planned concurrent VMs, be sure to disable memory trimming for guest OSes adding the following line to the virtual machine configuration (.vmx) file:
  memTrimRate="0"
• A really performance hitter for virtual machines is a fragmented host OS disk. Be sure to schedule a disk defragmentation on your host OS a regular basis (best: daily)
• See more tips here.

By now, I am a bit more happy

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One way to fix slow FireFox startup

Last time FireFox was starting up very slowly on my computer. I am using FireFox 3.6, which is by now the most recent version.
The next solution helped me to increase the startup time.

• Start FireFox
• Type about:config in the address bar
  
• Search for the preference name browser.sessionstore.enabled
  
• Edit the value to false
  
• If you cannot find it, you should create this preference name:
  1. Right click somewhere in the window
  2. Choose New>Boolean
  
  3. Enter the preference name browser.sessionstore.enabled
  
  4. Select the value false in the 'Enter Boolean value' window
  5. Press 'OK'
  6. Restart FireFox

Note:
with this value set to this preference, you will not have the option for session restore if FireFox crashes. To get the session restore option back, just edit this preference value to true or just delete this entry (Right click on preference and select Reset, restart FireFox and your entry is gone).
EDIT:
Search also for browser.sessionstore.resume_from_crash and set this value also to false.

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SharePoint 2007: Create and manage custom theme in a flexible way

Recently I started to create a custom theme. As you may know, when you change the theme of a site, SharePoint will get a copy of the chosen theme and place that in the content database.
And that is exactly not what I was looking for. I just want to have one single place where my custom theme is located so I can easily manage and change the theme. This will affect than all sites that are (already) using my custom theme.

Here is how to do this:

1. Go to 12-hive\TEMPLATES\
2. A good starting point is to make a copy of an existing theme that’s close to what you want to have. For example make a copy of the VINTAGE folder.
3. Rename it to e.g. MYCUSTOMTHEME.
4. Inside this folder, rename the VINTAGE.INF file to MYCUSTOMTHEME.INF.
5. Open this MYCUSTOMTHEME.INF and replace all ‘vintage’ text into ‘mycustomtheme’ (without quotes).
6. Add an entry for the MYCUSTOMTHEME in the SPTHEMES.XML
   

   
   <Templates>
    <TemplateID>mycustomtheme</TemplateID>
    <DisplayName>My Custom Theme</DisplayName>
    <Description>This is my cool customized theme</Description>
    <Thumbnail>images/thmycustomtheme.gif</Thumbnail>
    <Preview>images/thmycustomtheme.gif</Preview>
   </Templates>
   

   
   (Note: the thmycustomtheme.gif image can be created when you are done with customization of your theme. Place this file on 12-hive\TEMPLATE\IMAGES\)


7. Instead of leaving the theme images and stylesheets inside the MYCUSTOMTHEME folder (12-hive\TEMPLATE\THEMES\MYCUSTOMTHEME) we need to move the images and stylesheets to be able to edit and see our changes immediate.
   a). Create subfolders called MYCUSTOMTHEME inside the following folders:
   i. \12\TEMPLATE\IMAGES\
   ii. \12\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\1033\STYLES\ (note: 1033 is dependent on your language)
   b). Move all images from the 12\TEMPLATE\THEMES\MYCUSTOMTHEME to 12\TEMPLATE\IMAGES\MYCUSTOMTHEME.
   c). Move the theme.css (and when using MOSS, mossExtensions.css) to \12\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\1033\STYLES\MYCUSTOMTHEME\. These two files you will use for your customizations.
   d). Go to 12\TEMPLATE\THEMES\MYCUSTOMTHEME\. There is one file left (mycustomtheme.inf).
   e). Create a new (text)file, called theme.css and open it.
   f). Add the following lines of code:
   

   
   @import "/_layouts/1033/STYLES/mycustomtheme/mossextensions.css";
   @import "/_layouts/1033/STYLES/mycustomtheme/theme.css";
   

   
   g). Now, when you set a site theme to your ‘mycustomtheme’, the theme.css you just created (with the import statements) are stored in the content database, but the site will use the the css-files on your file system. Now you are ready to edit your css files.
8. Remember to refer to the images like: url(“/_layouts/images/mycustomtheme/)

The following pictures shows where the customtheme folders are located:

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Release date SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010

Last Saturday, Microsoft announced the release date of both SharePoint 2010 en Microsoft Office 2010. Arpan Shah wrote:

"Today, we officially announced that May 12th, 2010, is the launch date for SharePoint 2010 & Office 2010. In addition, we announced our intent to RTM (Release to Manufacturing) this April 2010."

For consumers, Office 2010 will be available online and on retail shelves this June.
You can read more at http://blogs.technet.com/office2010/archive/2010/03/04/get-office-today-or-tomorrow.aspx and http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/businessproductivity/proof/pages/2010-launch-events.aspx

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Site Tips: Branding SharePoint (WSS3.0 and MOSS2007)

Yesterday I started with branding SharePoint for one of our customers. Creating a custom theme is not that easy as it should be. I will come back later on that.
I found some useful sites on the internet. I want to share this one in particular with you:

• http://www.heathersolomon.com/content/sp07cssreference.htm

This is a nice overview of the used style elements in SharePoint sites. You can easily find the corresponding element that are used in the stylesheets ( e.g. .ms-topnavselected) by using the index or screenshots.
The main site, http://www.heathersolomon.com/blog/articles/sp2007.aspx, shows a lot of information about the structure and customizations of sites.

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Install WSS3.0 and MOSS 2007 on Windows 2008 Server R2

Installing SharePoint (either WSS 3.0 or MOSS 2007) on a Windows Server 2008 R2 is not just a 'next-next-finish' action.
At least, I tried it with MOSS 2007 with SP1. It will not work!

You will get the following error message:

Title: Program Compatibility Assistant
Message: No solutions found for Office SharePoint Server 2007 - Please read Microsoft Knowledge Base article: 962935

Don't try to find this KB article (it's here). It doesn't have anything to do with this particular problem.

The work-around for this problem is as follows:

1. Copy the setup folder of WSS3.0 or MOSS 2007 to the local drive of the server, e.g. C:\Moss_Install
2. Delete all content in the sub folder "updates"
3. Download WSS3.0 SP2 (here) and MOSS 2007 SP2 (here)
4. Open a command prompt and navigate to the folder where you put the both SP2 files
5. Extract WSS 3.0 SP2 and MOSS 2007 SP2 using the command prompt:
   [filename] /extract:[path to copied setup folder step 1]\Updates /quiet
   Example:
   officeserver2007sp2-kb953334-x64-fullfile-en-us.exe /extract:c:\Moss_Install\Updates
   The SharePoint installation program will automatically read this folder to apply the patches.
6. Optional: some people mention to delete the wsssetup.dll file. I didn't for the MOSS setup. It just works leaving this file.
7. Start the setup.exe in the copied setup folder and you are on your way.
   

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