Hi Folks,
Restoring SharePoint portal server is a straight forward and easy job, but sometimes there are some restrictions that might put in a realllllly bad situation due to service packs versions, here is an example:
You have a machine that has SharePoint SP2 installed, and you wanted to restore an old copy of a portal that has SP1 installed, SharePoint wont allow you to restore the an old version due to versioning issues, so the first solution that would come in your mind is :
- Uninstall SP2 for WSS and SPS.
- Install SP1 for WSS and SPS.
- Restore the portal.
- Upgrade to SP2 for WSS and SPS.
I found a better way without uninstalling anything, but I don't guarantee that it will always work, because Microsoft does not allow restoring from service packs versions for a specific reason I am not aware off.
Please open the file that holds the backup configuration in your backed up files (i.e. the file that has an ext of .XML), the first tag would appear like this in both service pack versions:
SP1 ---- <SharePointPortalServerBackupManifest Version="11.0.6715.0" BackupType="Site-All" TimeStamp="2006-05-17 14:57:38Z">
SP2 ---- <SharePointPortalServerBackupManifest Version="11.0.8126.0" BackupType="All" TimeStamp="2006-05-31 14:04:59Z">
Simply change the versions and enjoy your restore process
, without doing any donkey work of installation issues.