Delete Site in Collection
Hello! I havea site collection with100+subsites and I needed to remove onethe subsites. Iusually gointo the subsites site settings andchoose "delete this site" and ithas always worked without issue. Well...I had a large site(10 GB) I needed to delete last week so I used my ususal method. The first thing I noticed was system performance tanked. You couldn't even navigate to sites. When the delete finishedall that was gone was the security groups. All the site content was intact. I thought possibly there was a problem with the site being so large so I deleted all the libraries and lists using sharepoint designer and/or the UI. I verified nothing was in the sites recycle bin or the site collections recycle bin and tried deleting again. Same results. A colleague suggested I try deleting from the command line (stsadm.exe -o deleteweb). Results were the same. Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can delete this subsite. Thanks in AdvanceRenee P.S. I also tried deleting from Sharepoint Designer with same result.ReneeDD
January 26th, 2009 4:56pm

Thats odd that you had that trouble. In the past with large sites, larger than your case, I've had some slowdowns with particular libraries but never the full site. Following the steps you did, I was able to work through it. Is it possible that something is referencing it or trying to access the content? I would maybe wait until off hours, do a reboot, and try again in Designer.
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January 26th, 2009 5:25pm

I will explore your idea about their being a reference somewhere. I have bounced IIS and tried the delete again without success. A reboot is the next step. Thanks for your help. ReneeDDReneeDD
January 27th, 2009 6:46pm

Hello, Please also try to disconnect the Web application from the content database and then reconnect it. To do the content database reconnection, please use the following steps: Note: Generally, removing content database wont cause any data loss, but please backup the database before the following steps, just in case. Enter Central Administration site. On the top navigation bar, click Application Management. On the Application Management page, in the SharePoint Web Application Management section, click Content databases. 4. On the Manage Content Databases page, click the content database that you want to remove. 5. On the Manage Content Database Settings page, in the Remove Content Database section, select the Remove content database check box. If any sites are currently using this database, a message box appears. Click OK to indicate that you want to proceed with the removal. 6. Click OK. 7. Go back to the Manage Content Databases page, click Add a content database. 8. If the Web application to which you want to add a content database to is not selected, on the Add Content Database page, in the Web Application section, click Change Web Application on the Web Application menu. 9. On the Select Web Application page, click the Web application to which you want to add the content database. 10. In the Database Name box, type a name for the content database you removed in Step 5. 11. Finish the other options and close this page. Check if the site still exists. If it does, please try to delete the site again. Thanks. Best Regards, Lionel
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January 28th, 2009 1:35pm

Hi ReneeDD, How did you make the subsite go away finally? I'm in the same situation as you were and interested to find out what you did. Please share when you have a moment. I'm afrid to try Lionel's suggestion - since the associated web application has a number of site collections and many sites. And I know once you remove the content db - sites need a full crawl and probably indexed too. Many thanks!
August 17th, 2010 5:13am

Deleting in small pieces worked for me - for detail steps see my thread. Hope this helps someone.
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September 2nd, 2010 6:08pm

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