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Prescan.exe Readme

Before you can upgrade to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 or MicrosoftWindows SharePoint Services 3.0, you must run the pre-upgrade scan tool(Prescan.exe) against your existing Web sites. The pre-upgrade scan tool scans your

sites and reports issues, which enables you to fix any errors before you perform anupgrade. If you have not successfully run this tool and you attempt to upgrade yourenvironment, when you attempt to run the SharePoint Products and TechnologiesConfiguration wizard, the wizard will exit and prompt you to run the tool. We highlyrecommend that the server administrator run the pre-upgrade scan tool before theupgrade, and resolve any problems that can be resolved before scheduling theupgrade.

Note It is a best practice to run the pre-upgrade scan tool at least twice oncewhile you are planning your upgrade to identify issues, and then again before youperform the upgrade to verify any changes you made and identify any new issuesthat may have resulted from changes to your environment.

For more information about upgrade, migration, and using the pre-upgrade scan tool,see the Microsoft Web site (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=89572).

What the pre-upgrade scan tool does

Prescan.exe has two primary purposes:

y Parse and save list definitions with the associated lists.SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Service Pack 2 parses and saves list definitionswith the associated lists whenever a list is modified. However, this processshould be completed for all lists, so Prescan.exe calls the method fromSharePoint Portal Server 2003 Service Pack 2 to persist that data.

y Report on common issues that will result in a failed upgrade.

Running Prescan.exe, identifying and resolving reported issues, and then re-running Prescan.exe to verify those fixes is a best practice when planning anupgrade to Office SharePoint Server 2007 or Windows SharePoint Services 3.0.

Issues that are reported by the pre-upgrade scan tool

For each SharePoint site, issues reported by this tool include the existence of thefollowing objects:

y Customized site templates You need to know which site templates have beencustomized for a particular site so you can verify the customizations again afterthe upgrade.

y Orphaned objects Objects such as list items, lists, documents, Web sites, and

site collections can be orphaned that is, the objects exist but are notassociated with a particular site. Because orphaned objects do not work in theprevious version, they wont work after the upgrade. If you perform an in-placeupgrade, the orphaned items will still exist but will not work. If you perform agradual upgrade, orphaned items will not be copied to the new site. Werecommend that you recover any orphaned objects before upgrading.

Tip Members of the Administrators group on the Web servers can recoverorphaned items before the upgrade by following the steps in KnowledgeBase article 918744, Description of a new command-line operation that you

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can use to repair content databases in Windows SharePoint Services(http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=69958&clcid=0x409).

y Custom Web Parts Report the existence of custom Web Parts to theappropriate site administrator or developer before upgrading, to give theadministrator or developer time to investigate.

Note Heavily obfuscated custom Web Parts might need to be rebuilt andredeployed after the upgrade.

y Sites that are based on languages or that use controls that are notinstalled If the database contains a Web site based on a language templatepack that is not currently installed on the front-end Web servers, or a Web sitethat uses controls (such as the Microsoft Office Web Components) that are notcurrently installed on the front-end Web servers, install the missing languagepacks or controls before upgrading.

Running the pre-upgrade scan tool

You can use the pre-upgrade scan tool to scan all Web sites in your environment (byusing the /all parameter) or to scan a specific URL (by using the /v

parameter). If you do not supply a scoping parameter, all Web sites will be scanned.The pre-upgrade scan tool takes the following parameters:

Parameter Description

/all Scans all site collections in a server farm.

/v Scans all site collections at a specific URL.

/c preupgradescanconfig.xml Uses the preupgradescanconfig.xml file whilescanning. This configuration file contains additionallogic to identify the portal site templates asstandard templates used by SharePoint PortalServer 2003 rather than as custom templatesbased on Windows SharePoint Services 2.0. Youmust use this parameter when scanning sitecollections based on SharePoint Portal

Server 2003. This parameter has no effect whenscanning site collections based on WindowsSharePoint Services 2.0.

Running the scan can take several minutes or a few hours, depending on the amountof content in your environment.

To run Prescan.exe, perform the following steps:

1. On the command line, change to the folder that contains the file, and then run theprescan.exe command with the appropriate parameters. For example,prescan.exe/all orprescan.exe/c preupgradescanconfig.xml/all.

2. After the scan has completed, review the summary report that is displayed in thecommand-line window.

If there were any errors or if any upgrade issues were found for your sites, you canreview the full report to see the details. The report is namedPreupgradeReport_uniqueID_Log.txt (where uniqueID is a number string) and it islocated in the temp directory on the computer of the user who ran the tool (forexample, %SYSTEMDRIVE%:\Documents and Settings\User1\Local Settings\Temp).There is also a prescan.log file in the same directory, which notes the times when thepre-upgrade scan tool was run.

After you run the pre-upgrade scan tool, you can review the reports to find andtroubleshoot issues. (You can search for "error" in the report to find the issues.) You

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can also share the relevant pre-upgrade scan test results with other members of theupgrade team. For example, you can report issues such as customized sitetemplates or custom Web Parts to the appropriate site owner, Web designer, ordeveloper before scheduling the upgrade to give them time to investigate the issuesand take preliminary steps. For example, a designer or developer might decide that itwould be prudent to rebuild a heavily obfuscated Web Part before the upgradeoccurs. Site owners can then verify any customizations that have been done to theirsites, including site templates and changes to core Active Server Pages Extension(ASPX) files, and can note any potential issues.

Common Prescan.exe errors

For more information about common errors that are logged in the pre-upgrade scanreport, see the Microsoft Web site (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=89571).