Resolve error : “This operation can be performed only on a computer that is joined to a server farm by users who have permissions in SQL Server to read from the configuration database. To connect this server to the server farm, use the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard, located on the Start menu in Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products” in SharePoint 2013 farm

Recently I came across an error like this in one of our SharePoint 2013 farms. The entire SharePoint farm was not available, even the Central Administration site gave me the exact error message

The error is related to database. Anyway I did’t do any changes to permission or any other modifications to bring my farm down. However I thought of checking the status of database server. I navigated to DB server and SQL Server Configuration Manager.

Due to some strange reason SQL Server service was stopped. It may be due to an unplanned restart of the server.

Once I started the service, my SharePoint farm came back to life

Stop unresponsive SharePoint 2013 service application service using PowerShell

In SharePoint we have Services on this Server page to manage different services like User Profile Service and SQL Server Reporting Services Service. Using that interface we can easily stop certain services from some servers and start them in other servers.

In one of my SharePoint farms, I needed to stop certain services in a particular server. I click on the stop link, but it was stuck in “Stopping”

I tried restarting SharePoint Timer Service and other remedies found in internet, but i was not that lucky.

I tried PowerShell as well.

First get the GUID of the required service application service using following command

Get-SPServiceInstance

I used following command to stop the service

Stop-SPServiceInstance -Identity "297f0d12-c09e-4182-8c42-e28065a36027"

There seems to be an unresponsive job. Let’s see the job first.

Get-SPTimerJob | where {$_.name -like "job-service-instance-297f0d12-c09e-4182-8c42-e28065a36027"}

Let’s delete the Job

$deleteJob = Get-SPTimerJob | where {$_.name -like "job-service-instance-297f0d12-c09e-4182-8c42-e28065a36027"}
$deleteJob.delete()

Then we will use PowerShell command to stop the service

Stop-SPServiceInstance -Identity "297f0d12-c09e-4182-8c42-e28065a36027"

After few seconds the service was stopped successfully

Resolving SharePoint 2013 installation error : This product requires Microsoft .Net Framework 4.5

When I try to install SharePoint 2013 in Microsoft Azure Virtual Machine, I got a strange error. It says that I don’t have Dot Net framework 4.5 installed.

I’m pretty sure that I’ve configured prerequisites properly. Even I checked the installed features to check if I forgot the required framework.

After some research, I found out that this may due to an unsupported .Net framework version. Currently .Net framework 4.6 is not supported for SharePoint 2013.

First we need to find out currently installed .Net versions. To check that there is a nice tool called “.Net Framework Setup Verification Utility” . You can download the tool from this location.

OK. We found out the culprit. We have both 4.6 and 4.6.1 versions. We need to uninstall them.

We can uninstall the update from Add or Remove Programs in Control Panel.

Navigate to “View instaled updates”  -> “Uninstall an update” section and search for KB3102467. Then we need to uninstall it as shown below. Finally we need to restart the server.

After restarting the server we can verify the .Net framework version again.

Great. Now we have .Net Framework 4.5.2 as our latest update. All seems to be fine.

Let’s start the SharePoint installation wizard.

No more prerequisite errors now. We can proceed with the installation