How to Resolve Failures in the SharePoint Product Config (psconfig) Tool

One night recently I was trying to install a whack load of new SharePoint updates, and I was having major pains trying to get the psconfig tool to run (both the UI tool and the command line version). I finally came up with a series of steps that works for both SharePoint 2010 and 2013.

Things I was encountering included:

• The psconfig wizard was freezing at 10% in the upgrade (you need the “-wait” switch in your psconfig – as seen in step 5)
• The psconfig wizard would fail with an SPUpdatedConcurrencyException error (this is included in steps 3 and 4 below)
• I was getting an EndpointNotFoundException error (the net stop/start steps needed “w3svc” in there as well – as seen in steps 1 and 6)

How I fixed our SharePoint farm upgrade woes (Note: run all PowerShell (PS) commands in an elevated PowerShell window – *need 2 pre-opened windows*)

1. Turn off all the following services (you can do this in your first PowerShell window)

   net stop SPTraceV4; net stop SPWriterV4; net stop SPAdminV4; net stop SPTimerV4; net stop w3svc
   

2. Manually stop both search services (in the services GUI on the SP server) – Note: SP 2010 only has 1 Search Service.
3. Run the following command in your second PowerShell window

   stsadm -o setproperty -pn command-line-upgrade-running -pv No
   

4. Flush the Config Cache follow this blog post
5. Run the following PowerShell in your second PowerShell window

   PSConfig.exe -cmd upgrade -inplace b2b -wait -force
   

6. As soon as it reaches step #3 in the upgrade process, in the first elevated PS window, run the following PS

   net start SPTraceV4; net start SPWriterV4; net start SPAdminV4; net start SPTimerV4; net start w3svc
   

7. Quickly manually start the two search services (in the Services GUI on the SP Server)
8. The upgrade process should complete successfully after this

Other things you may have to do (don’t do these during the procedure – if the above doesn’t work, try these afterwards and repeat the procedure above):

• Restart IIS or Reboot the server
• Deal with SQL exception 297 (if it appears) in the event log https://yiengly.wordpress.com/2014/08/01/sharepoint-2010-unknown-sql-exception-297-error/
• Grant access to DOMAIN\SERVERNAME$ and

  NT AUTHORITY\Network Service (sysadmin?) in SQL Server http://dba.stackexchange.com/questions/39094/login-failed-for-domain-servername-when-trying-to-create-a-new-sql-server-repor

The steps above were a combination of many of the following blog posts (no single post seemed to quite do what I needed);

• http://alstechtips.blogspot.ca/2015/03/sharepoint-2013-configuration-failed.html
• http://sharepoint.stackexchange.com/questions/118287/sharepoint-configuration-wizard-will-raise-microsoft-sharepoint-postsetupconfigu
• http://www.herlitz.nu/2014/10/30/psconfig-stuck-at-10
• Amazingly this page had everything I encountered, but again, no single post solved the whole thing: http://sharepointviews.com/tag/psconfig/
  • http://sharepointviews.com/system-servicemodel-endpointnotfoundexception-psconfig-sharepoint-20102013/
  • http://sharepointviews.com/an-update-conflict-has-occurred-and-you-must-re-try-this-action-psconfig-error-sharepoint-20102013/
  • http://sharepointviews.com/psconfig-error-at-step-3-of-4-cannot-upgrade-sharepoint-database/