Errors installing after uninstalling
Once again it is midnight on a Sunday evening and I find myself working. Oh the joys. :) Anyway, a quick post for you.
SharePoint911 got a new client this week and like many of them they had someone in to do SharePoint before us. And I am the lucky guy who gets to clean up after someone else's half ass attempt to be SharePoint consultants. (I will save my rant for another day.) But as normal even though the client has SQL Server running on the SharePoint box the "consultant" did a basic install of MOSS Enterprise which puts SQL Express on the machine and uses it. As anyone who has taken my class or seen one of my admin presentations this annoys me more than anything. SQL Express has a 4 GB HARD LIMIT on database size! But worse than that basic install uses local system for EVERYTHING which works correctly for about 5 minutes, then the first time you try to do anything with the product it explodes. UGH. So before we start the project I am backing up all of their content and then uninstalling and reinstalling. To me this is the only clean way to get rid of the basic install.
After a reboot to make the server stable again I ran the uninstaller from add/remove programs. This will also automatically install SQL Express. After the uninstall another reboot.
Then I reinstalled MOSS choosing the Complete option. When the installer finished it launched Configuration Wizard.
After specifying the database server, farm account, and password I was prompted to setup Central Admin
Here when I clicked next I got the error message.
An exception of type System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException was thrown. Additional exception information: The system cannot find the path specified.
Why? Because for some reason during the uninstall SharePoint failed to remove the old Web Applications (IIS Sites). So SharePoint couldn't create a Web Application for central admin because a dead one was already in its place. So I went into IIS, deleted everything from the previous install and reran configuration wizard. Everything ran like a charm.
Hope this saves someone a few minutes.
Shane SharePoint Consulting