SharePoint Solution Installer timeout – Bamboo Nation – Project Management Central

Bamboo Nation uses the SharePoint Solution Installer to deploy their Web Parts. When installing their Project Management Central suite of web parts, the installer would pause on the "Waiting (max. 15 minutes) for solution deployment…" screen before moving onto the next Web Part. After waiting through a couple of these (and refusing to wait through 26 of them) and then clicking Abort, I was presented with the log file which contained a bunch of timeout errors.



The installation process actually depends on the following two services being started or set to Automatic.

• Windows SharePoint Services Administration
• Windows SharePoint Services Timer

Both of these services were set to Automatic on my machine, so I almost ruled it out as a problem. The Administration service was started, but the timer service was not. Just to make sure, I tried to start the timer service and It failed.



The key difference between these two services lies in the Log On As column. The Windows SharePoint Services Timer service is set to log on with with my domain credentials.

I had recently changed my domain password. Updating my password on the Log On tab of the property screen for the timer service fixed the problem, and my Bamboo Nation Project Management Central installed perfectly.

Missing Merge Modules after updating Visual Studio - Unable to find module file 'C:\Program Files\Common Files\Merge Modules\Crystal_Database_Access2003.msm'

This problem affects Visual Studio 2003 projects that have been updated to Visual Studio 2005 or great. If your solution has a Setup Project that depends on old merge modules, you might get the following error when trying to build the Setup Project.

Unable to find module file 'C:\Program Files\Common Files\Merge Modules\Crystal_Database_Access2003.msm'

Basically, the merge modules no longer exist in the given location. Fixing the problem is as easy as copying the missing modules into the ‘C:\Program Files\Common Files\Merge Modules\’folder, but tracking down the files was a bit harder than it should have been.

You can download the merge modules you need from the following address. Hope this helps.

https://smpdl.sap-ag.de/~sapidp/012002523100006009302008E/cr_net_2003_mm_en.zip

(If the above link stops working, please leave a comment and I’ll try to update it.)