I have an unusual error that does not seem to have any precedent (or reference on the Internet). I have looked under almost every concievable rock and Web discussion board, but have found very little. The SharePoint 2007 box is patched to SP2 and cumulative updates to build 12.0.0.6421. It is a single WFE and application server with an SQL Server 2008 R2 backend. The two server instances are hosted on Hyper-V, and are using Windows 2008. The issues arises anytime there is an attempt to create an alert on a list or library on the intranet Web Application. Note that the default setting for alerts has not been changed - alerts are enabled with a setting of 500 per user. The error message, in typical SharePoint fashion, was very vague. I changed the web.config file to expose the actual call error, and the following was revealed: Unable to cast object of type 'Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPWebServiceInstance' to type 'Microsoft.SharePoint.SPAlertTemplate'. at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPPersistedObjectCollection`1.get_BackingList() at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPPersistedObjectCollection`1.get_IsEmpty() at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPAlertTemplateCollection.EnsureDefaultAlertTemplates() at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPAlertTemplateCollection..ctor(SPWebService wssService) at Microsoft.SharePoint.ApplicationPages.SubNewEditBasePage.GetAlertTemplate(SPAlert sub, String strAlertTemplateName, SPList list) at Microsoft.SharePoint.ApplicationPages.SubNewEditBasePage.InitForm(Boolean fSubNew, Label LabelPageTitle, PlaceHolder PanelSendTo1, PlaceHolder PanelSendTo2, Label LabelEmailAddr, RadioButtonList RadioBtnEventType, RadioButtonList RadioBtnAlertFreq, RadioButtonList RadioBtnAlertFilter, PlaceHolder PanelEventTypes, PlaceHolder PanelFilters, PlaceHolder PanelFrequency, PlaceHolder PanelFrequencyTime, PlaceHolder PanelListViewFilters, PlaceHolder PanelTitle, TextBox TextTitle, DropDownList DdlView) at Microsoft.SharePoint.ApplicationPages.SubNewPage.OnLoad(EventArgs e) at System.Web.UI.Control.LoadRecursive() at System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint) A couple of observations and notes: 1. This issue with alerts does not affect Central Administration. I can set an alert on a list or library in Central Administration. 2. This affects two Web Applications, which are user facing. One is the intranet site, the other a training site. 3. I attempted to correct this error by recreating the Web Applications. Nothing changed. Alerts were still hosed. 4. My last troubleshooting step will be to place the farm account as the application pool account for one of the Web Apps. This is definitely not a fix, but just to see if there is a strange security issue. I have not been able to do this yet, and will post results when able. Thanks for any assistance.CJW

Hi, Is your SharePoint Alternate Access Mapping configured correctly? Also are you able to run STSADM -updatealerttemplates (not changing anything here though.) - Please see the following link. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd278299(office.12).aspx hth,-- techChirag

Hi, Is your SharePoint Alternate Access Mapping configured correctly? Also are you able to run STSADM -updatealerttemplates (not changing anything here though.) - Please see the following link. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd278299(office.12).aspx hth,-- techChirag

Thanks for the reply. I will look into both tomorrow. One question however: the AAM is part of the Web Application. If I delete the Web Application, don't all of the AAMs associated with it disappear? I have to look into this a little further. Thanks again for the reply.CJW