Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server Service Pack 2 Post-Release Bulletin

On January 13, 2003, Microsoft released Service Pack 2 (SP2) for SharePoint Portal Server 2001. Soon afterward, continued internal testing revealed a previously undiscovered problem in the service pack. Microsoft immediately discontinued downloads of the service pack and is completing the required updates. In the meantime, Microsoft wants to provide information for customers who may have downloaded and installed this service pack.

This problem involves the way that indexing is performed. Indexing is a process initiated by content sources set up by the administrator, through which the content on the server is made searchable. This problem may, in some cases, cause the indexing process to be incomplete, therefore preventing portions of the content from being exposed to searches.

This problem does not occur in every case, and it is dependent on a large number of conditions. Even in cases where the problem does occur, the content is not at risk of deletion or corruption; it will just not be included in the index.

Microsoft recommends that customers who have downloaded and installed SharePoint Portal Server SP2 avoid performing indexing (also known as crawling) until the corrected version of the service pack is available. Microsoft Product Support Services (PSS) stands ready to provide assistance to any customers affected by the problem. For information about contacting PSS, visit the following Microsoft Web site: Note There is no charge for support calls related to this problem.

A corrected version of SP2 is under development and will be completed soon. When the new version is available, Microsoft will update this article to provide information about how to obtain and install it. Microsoft deeply regrets any inconvenience that this problem may have caused its customers, and is investigating changes to company development and testing procedures that will help prevent future problems of this nature.

If you have not downloaded SP2, an updated version of SP2 will be made available soon. Please check back to obtain this updated version.

If you have downloaded SP2 but have not yet installed the service pack, Microsoft recommends that you wait for the updated version.

SharePoint Portal Server uses indexes of content to support search queries, which are built by the content sources set up by portal administrators. When SP2 is installed and a scheduled crawl of a content source (to build or rebuild an index) is instantiated, administrators may receive the following error message: This error message is displayed in the Gatherer log after the crawl of the administrator's content source.

This error may occur when the number of filtering processes started by the software approaches the size limit of a pool set up to manage the processes. This pool size-limit number is set automatically by the software and is dependent on the server’s hardware and software configuration.

Although this error applies to administrators, end users may also be affected. As a result of this error, after a new index build or crawl is completed, end users may no longer see the search results that they expect to see.