All,
About 6 months ago i created 3 custom Web Parts in Visual Studio and these were deployed brilliantly when using the Studio Add-In. No Deployment Errors and Installtion through Studio was fine. I did this on our Single SharePoint Server running Windows Server 2003 SQL Server 2005 and SharePoint 2007 using an Enterprise Key. This was a singe server farm.
However the current situation is that this server has suffered heavy usage and search index use is slowing the server dramatically. We have also had several outages due to database and service issues on the server.
We have taken the decision to commision 3 new servers. Each running Windows Server 2003 64bit SQL Server 2008 and Moss2007. These machines were configured as follows. 1st Machine is running OS and SQL Server 2008 only designated as our Database Server. 2 machines running Server 2003 64 Bit and MOSS2007 64 bit installed only 1 of these is configured as Front End using the Complete Installation the other is configured as the Search Index Server using the Complete MOSS2007 Installtion. MOSS was installed with our Enterprise key.
The configuration is operation and has no errors as reported by the MOSS Best Practice Analyser.
I then made a site back up of our Single Server and resotred this to our New Farm of servers. At this point all is still ok search works Content and Navigation works but the 3 custom web parts i deployed on the single server (Old MOSS2007) report they are not safe.
Rather than having Studio install these Web Parts i used the SETUP.BAT file studio created in the Bin\Release Folder of my solutions. This installed works fine to add and remove the web parts on the single server environment but when i try to install on the the new farm environment it installs and deploys but fails when trying to activate the feature. Error message along the lines on trying to activate the feature in this scope.
I can confirm that the Web Part Feature folder is in the 12 hive with everything it should have. It also places the dll in the GAC and adds the relevant Safe Control entries in the Web.Config file with the correct public Key token.
I have noticed the following:-
The DLL in the GAC is showing the processor architecture as X86 on the new 64 bit environment wheras it was MSIL on the single server 32 bit environment.
The Web PArt appears in the Web PArt Gallary and is editable.
When trying to add the Web Part on to a new Page i get the Cannot Import the Web Part Error.
It Does Not Appear in the Populate Gallary screen.
If you use the BAT file to install on both servers running Sharepoint the 1st install has trouble activating the feature wheras the 2nd server sees its already installed but activates the feature fine. Whichever way round you install.
I have tried the -force switch and that made no difference.
Any ideas of where to look next would be very helpful. In this case its not an option to install and Use Studio to deploy the web part. Way i see this issue is that 1st we are operating 64 Bit now and 2nd we are running a farm of server now.
Many Many Thanks.
Craig.