SharePoint Gradual Upgrade – Random Page Error ‘This Page is Redirecting…’

Earlier today, I was helping a client with a pretty straight-forward gradual upgrade from SharePoint Portal Server 2003 on MSDE over to MOSS 2007 on SQL Server 2005 (no customizations performed and only 2GB of data). We got through the MSDE -> SQL side of things fine, ran prescan.exe (which reported absolutely nothing wrong – zero issues) and then installed MOSS 2007 and performed our upgrade.  Once the upgrade was completed, we tested the 2007 side, and everything but 13 links (lucky number, eh?) worked.  When we clicked on any of these thirteen links, we would get a message similiar to:

This page is redirecting to http://domain/Area/Name in 5 seconds.
To edit this URL click here.

And if you clicked on the ‘edit this URL click here’ you would get a Page Not Found error.  In addition, if you looked at your address bar, it would look something like:

http://domain/whatever/Pages/UpgLandingPgRedir.aspx

So it was obvious that for some reason, the links we were clicking on were trying to be redirected, but they really didn’t know where to go.  After doing some digging, there was a simple answer:

The area was upgraded and moved over to a new page, but for some reason during the upgrade, SharePoint kept the UpgLandingPgRedir.aspx as the Welcome Page.  So there was obviously a simple fix…

1.  On any page where this error was appearing, Site Actions -> Site Settings -> Modify All Site Settings

2.  Then in administration, under Look and Feel -> Welcome Page

3.  Note the URL of the Welcome Page… it’s pointing to the UpgLandingPgRedir.aspx… change UpgLandingPgRedir.aspx to default.aspx

Now when you click the link, it pulls up default.aspx instead of UpgLandingPgRedir.aspx.  Very simple fix. 

Note one other thing – that the UpgLandingPgRedir.aspx is going to be sitting in all of your Page Libraries where you encountered this error.  I like a nice clean environment, so after switching all of the welcome pages, I also went in and deleted that page from the page libraries (xxxx/Pages/Forms/AllItems.aspx).

Good luck upgrading!

Technorati Tags:
MOSS 2007, SPS 2003, SharePoint, SharePoint 2007, SharePoint Portal Server 2003, SharePoint Upgrade, Gradual Upgrade

-Chris

Andrew Connell – SharePoint MVP & MGM Lion Tamer

I was looking through some pictures today that were taken at SharePoint Connections, and I noticed something… Andrew Connell, SharePoint MVP, is also a lion tamer at the MGM Grand hotel. I must say, I’m impressed (in case you don’t know what AC looks like – here… check out his blog).  Note: to see the full picture, click on the image in this post.