I was cleaning up some sites in my Sharepoint 2007 deployment by deleting them. I did not delete the main collection however I could not get to the root of the site after deleting one of the sites we were no longer using. I use DPM to backup the content database but RESTORE has failed and I am stuck. I deleted the main collection and re-created it , attaching it to the original wscontent.mdf thinking it would reconnect the many sites that we still use but it did not. The database is still showing 26 sites but they are not accessible through the original URLS. Is there anything I can do to get the content from these sites ..lists etc to link to the new application? thanks... Andrew

Hello Andrew Holmes, Thank you for your question. I am trying to involve someone familiar with this topic to further look at this issue. There might be some time delay. Appreciate your patience. Thank you for your understanding and support.

That's a tricky situation to be in, luckily SharePoint can be remarkably resilient in situations like this and it can often be possible to recover some or even all of your data. Hopefully Wayne will be able to involve someone to help you out fully, unfortunately getting everything back up and running (if possible) will be a pretty involving process and probably beyond what can be done via forums. In the meantime you may be able to gain some level of access to your data or even your sites. the first thing I'd suggest is to investigate what errors SharePoint is reporting. It's easiest to do this on the server itself. To make finding the right errors easy, open the clock on the server so you can time what you do to the second. Then try browsing to your site, noting the exact time you do so. Then you can examine the SharePoint ULS log for the detailed errors being returned, by default this log file is in c:\program files\common files\microsoft shared\web server extensions\12\logs, you can find the definite location in the logging section in central administration if it has been changed. You should also check the windows event logs for corresponding errors, in particular any ASP.Net errors, but also SharePoint specific ones. If you copy these errors up here some of us may be able to help with them. You should also check to see if you can gain access to any parts of your site. Assuming that browsing to your home page such as http://<sitename> is giving an error, you may be able to get access via other URLs. The 'layouts' pages are the best bet, try browsing to http://<sitename>/_layouts/settings.aspx to get the site settings page, and http://<sitename>/_layouts/viewlsts.aspx to get the 'All Site Content' page. From the site content page you may be able to browse into lists and libraries. They should also work for subsites using http://<sitename>/<subsite>/_layouts/..... so try a few subsites even if it doesn't work at the top level. You may also be able to gain some level of access via SharePoint Designer, so download and install that if you haven't already. You can use it to open your top level site, i.e. http://<sitename> or subsites, i.e. http://<sitename>/<subsite>. In the folder list on the left you can navigate through the site seeing the lists and libraries. It also lists the current site's subsites (note if you double-click them it opens a new seperate designer window to that site). When you browse to a library it should show you the files in it. You may be able to drag and drop these out to a windows explorer window, but sometimes it just puts in a link to the file. In this case select the files you want, right click and choose to 'Publish selected files', you can then publish these to a file system location such as a network file share. This will let you at least get documents out of SharePoint. It's also possible that your subsites would work fine if they were in a different site collection. If you open them in SharePoint designer you may be able to export them as templates by going to File->Export->SharePoint Site Template. This will try to open a SharePoint page to export it as a template, you can give it a name and choose to include all content which will include your list and library content. If this works, you could then look at creating a new seperate web application, with a brand new site collection in it, bring in the templates and recreate your subsites. Let us know how you get on.

That's a tricky situation to be in, luckily SharePoint can be remarkably resilient in situations like this and it can often be possible to recover some or even all of your data. Hopefully Wayne will be able to involve someone to help you out fully, unfortunately getting everything back up and running (if possible) will be a pretty involving process and probably beyond what can be done via forums. In the meantime you may be able to gain some level of access to your data or even your sites. the first thing I'd suggest is to investigate what errors SharePoint is reporting. It's easiest to do this on the server itself. To make finding the right errors easy, open the clock on the server so you can time what you do to the second. Then try browsing to your site, noting the exact time you do so. Then you can examine the SharePoint ULS log for the detailed errors being returned, by default this log file is in c:\program files\common files\microsoft shared\web server extensions\12\logs, you can find the definite location in the logging section in central administration if it has been changed. You should also check the windows event logs for corresponding errors, in particular any ASP.Net errors, but also SharePoint specific ones. If you copy these errors up here some of us may be able to help with them. You should also check to see if you can gain access to any parts of your site. Assuming that browsing to your home page such as http://<sitename> is giving an error, you may be able to get access via other URLs. The 'layouts' pages are the best bet, try browsing to http://<sitename>/_layouts/settings.aspx to get the site settings page, and http://<sitename>/_layouts/viewlsts.aspx to get the 'All Site Content' page. From the site content page you may be able to browse into lists and libraries. They should also work for subsites using http://<sitename>/<subsite>/_layouts/..... so try a few subsites even if it doesn't work at the top level. You may also be able to gain some level of access via SharePoint Designer, so download and install that if you haven't already. You can use it to open your top level site, i.e. http://<sitename> or subsites, i.e. http://<sitename>/<subsite>. In the folder list on the left you can navigate through the site seeing the lists and libraries. It also lists the current site's subsites (note if you double-click them it opens a new seperate designer window to that site). When you browse to a library it should show you the files in it. You may be able to drag and drop these out to a windows explorer window, but sometimes it just puts in a link to the file. In this case select the files you want, right click and choose to 'Publish selected files', you can then publish these to a file system location such as a network file share. This will let you at least get documents out of SharePoint. It's also possible that your subsites would work fine if they were in a different site collection. If you open them in SharePoint designer you may be able to export them as templates by going to File->Export->SharePoint Site Template. This will try to open a SharePoint page to export it as a template, you can give it a name and choose to include all content which will include your list and library content. If this works, you could then look at creating a new seperate web application, with a brand new site collection in it, bring in the templates and recreate your subsites. Let us know how you get on.

Hello Andrew, I want to make sure I’m understanding what steps you went through so far. When you say you “deleted the main collection and re-created it, attaching it to the original wscontent.mdf”. Did you delete the site collection and re-create a new one it or did you create a new web application and attach the old wscontent.mdf to it? Also some additional questions: Are you using a host header on the original site? What is the exact error when browsing to the original URL? Please let us know if you had a chance to check if you can gain access to any parts of your site as Steven mentioned on his post above and if they were accessible. Do you have a test environment with same patch level as your production. If yes you may want to create a new web application and try restoring a backup from DPM. Thanks, Manas

Hi Steven Mulkerrins, Would you please let us know how is your problem going? Is the suggestion helpful for your issue? If you need further assistance, please feel free to let us know. Thanks, Wayne TechNet Subscriber Support in forum If you have any feedback on our support, please contact tngfb@microsoft.com

Did you mean to address this to Andrew ? :)

Hi Andrew, Would you please let us know how is your problem going? Is the suggestion helpful for your issue? If you need further assistance, please feel free to let us know. Thanks, Wayne TechNet Subscriber Support in forum If you have any feedback on our support, please contact tngfb@microsoft.com