dBforums – SQLAgent is not allowed to run

From dbforums I found this bugfix for the Sqlagent$sharepoint not running problem. It appears to fix the problem.

Got this from MS Support…

Go to the following reg key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/MICROSOFT/MICROSOFT SQL SERVER/SHAREPOINT/SQLSERVERAGENT

and delete the 'GUID' line.

SQL Agent will run now.”

The Lewis Doctrine

The Lewis Doctrine

Bernard Lewis often tells audiences about an encounter he once had in Jordan. The Princeton University historian, author of more than 20 books on Islam and the Middle East, says he was chatting with Arab friends in Amman when one of them trotted out an argument familiar in that part of the world.

“We have time, we can wait,” he quotes the Jordanian as saying. “We got rid of the Crusaders. We got rid of the Turks. We'll get rid of the Jews.”

Hearing this claim “one too many times,” Mr. Lewis says, he politely shot back, “Excuse me, but you've got your history wrong. The Turks got rid of the Crusaders. The British got rid of the Turks. The Jews got rid of the British. I wonder who is coming here next.”

The vignette, recounted in the 87-year-old scholar's native British accent, always garners laughs. Yet he tells it to underscore a serious point. Most Islamic countries have failed miserably at modernizing their societies, he contends, beckoning outsiders — this time, Americans — to intervene.

Call it the Lewis Doctrine. Though never debated in Congress or sanctified by presidential decree, Mr. Lewis's diagnosis of the Muslim world's malaise, and his call for a U.S. military invasion to seed democracy in the Mideast, have helped define the boldest shift in U.S. foreign policy in 50 years. The occupation of Iraq is putting the doctrine to the test.


Terrorism has replaced Moscow as the global foe. And now America, having outlasted the Soviets to become the sole superpower, no longer seeks to contain but to confront, defeat and transform. How successful it is at remolding Iraq and the rest of the Mideast could have a huge impact on what sort of superpower America will be for decades to come: bold and assertive — or inward, defensive and cut off.

As mentor and informal adviser to some top U.S. officials, Mr. Lewis has helped coax the White House to shed decades of thinking about Arab regimes and the use of military power. Gone is the notion that U.S. policy in the oil-rich region should promote stability above all, even if it means taking tyrants as friends. Also gone is the corollary notion that fostering democratic values in these lands risks destabilizing them. Instead, the Lewis Doctrine says fostering Mideast democracy is not only wise but imperative.

After Sept. 11, 2001, as policy makers fretted urgently about how to understand and deal with the new enemy, Mr. Lewis helped provide an answer. If his prescription is right, the U.S. may be able to blunt terrorism and stabilize a region that, as the chief exporter of oil, powers the industrial world and underpins the U.S.-led economic order. If it's wrong, as his critics contend, America risks provoking sharper conflicts that spark more terrorism and undermine energy security.

After the terror attacks, White House staffers disagreed about how to frame the enemy. One group believed Muslim anger was all a misunderstanding — that Muslims misperceived America as decadent and godless. Their solution: Launch a vast campaign to educate Muslims about America's true virtue. Much of that effort, widely belittled in the press and overseas, was quietly abandoned.

A faction led by political strategist Karl Rove believed soul-searching over “why Muslims hate us” was misplaced. Mr. Rove summoned Mr. Lewis to address some White House staffers, military aides and staff members of the National Security Council. The historian recited the modern failures of Arab and Muslim societies and argued that anti-Americanism stemmed from their own inadequacies, not America's. Mr. Lewis also met privately with Mr. Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice. Mr. Frum says he soon noticed Mr. Bush carrying a marked-up article by Mr. Lewis among his briefing papers. A White House spokesman declined to comment.

Says Mr. Frum: “Bernard comes with a very powerful explanation for why 9/11 happened. Once you understand it, the policy presents itself afterward.”


The Lewis Doctrine posits no such rational foe. It envisions not a clash of interests or even ideology, but of cultures. In the Mideast, the font of the terrorism threat, America has but two choices, “both disagreeable,” Mr. Lewis has written: “Get tough or get out.” His celebration, rather than shunning, of toughness is shared by several other influential U.S. Mideast experts, including Fouad Ajami and Richard Perle.

A central Lewis theme is that Muslims have had a chip on their shoulders since 1683, when the Ottomans failed for the second time to sack Christian Vienna. “Islam has been on the defensive” ever since, Mr. Lewis wrote in a 1990 essay called “The Roots of Muslim Rage,” where he described a “clash of civilizations,” a concept later popularized by Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington. For 300 years, Mr. Lewis says, Muslims have watched in horror and humiliation as the Christian civilizations of Europe and North America have overshadowed them militarily, economically and culturally.

“The question people are asking is why they hate us. That's the wrong question,” said Mr. Lewis shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks. “In a sense, they've been hating us for centuries, and it's very natural that they should. You have this millennial rivalry between two world religions, and now, from their point of view, the wrong one seems to be winning.”

He continued: “More generally … you can't be rich, strong, successful and loved, particularly by those who are not rich, not strong and not successful. So the hatred is something almost axiomatic. The question which we should be asking is why do they neither fear nor respect us?”

Peter Waldmann
WSJ Online
3 February 2004

[The Braden Files]

This is a fascinating article that provides the foundation for understanding the current US foreign policy in the Middle East. Recently some of the Middle East countries have stated to take on their problems with internal terrorism, unemployment, and participation in government. This makes me believe that these countries believe the “Get tough” policy by the US is here to stay and that they need to stop accommodating terrorists or the US will put someone else in charge.

SharePoint Products and Technologies 2003 Software Development Kit (SDK)

SharePoint Products and Technologies 2003 Software Development Kit (SDK). This SDK contains conceptual overviews, programming tasks, samples, and references to guide you in developing solutions based on Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies. [ActiveWin.com Headlines]

One of the big reasons SBS2K3 is attractive compared to a Linux distro is the potential of Sharepoint. The basic installation of Sharepoint is okay but to unlock the business process improvement you need to customize and automate it to match your business needs. If the process improvement is real for customers, Sharepoint will drive SBS upgrades and new installations.

A List Apart No. 170. In the 170th issue of A List Apart, for people who make websites: EXPLORING FOOTERS – by Bobby van der Sluis. With old-school table layout methods, vertical positioning is a piece of cake. With CSS layout, it's a piece of something else. Regain control of footers and other vertically positioned layout elements. JAVASCRIPT IMAGE GALLERY – by Jeremy Keith. Making an online gallery of pictures should be a quick process. The gap between snapping some pictures and publishing them on the web ought to be a short one. Here's a quick and easy way to build a dynamic image gallery. Plus: talk to the W3C. [Jeffrey Zeldman Presents: The Daily Report]

I will have to review how I have positioned footers in the past. I remember I had to try several variations before it was right. Maybe he has a better idea.

I ran the cummlative upgrade for IE 6.1 and fixed the search problem in Windows Explorer on 2003. Search would pop up a couple of error messages before completing your search. I found a hotfix for it and it said to wait for the next IE update. Lo and behold, they were right.

Microsoft Baseline Security

I am pretty happy with Microsoft's Baseline Security program and have been using it get all of the computers current. It is particularly nice about pointing out problems with SQL, Exchange, and MSXML.

Some gotchas about simple upgrades.

The upgrade to SBS2K3 should have been pretty simple. Things that got me were:

  1. ISA problems with web proxy. You don't expect this when the version stays the same but it happened.
  2. New profile on XP. I did not intend it but I did not re-use my existing profile. For some reason my profile ended up being whuber.wehubconsulti versus whuber. It broke a couple of things so I had to perform some quick copies and re-installs.
  3. I had export .pst files of my mailbox, the public folders, and my rules. It took me a little while to set up the permissions to re-create the public folders. I tried to start up Exchange 2003 with the converted  version I had saved but Exchange puked. So I went to plan B.
  4. I had to change my SMTP server settings. It wanted HELO versus EHELO.

Web proxy problem solved…Well, kind of

I have been having problems getting the web proxy clients to work correctly through ISA. They work as firewall clients but not as web proxy clients. I kept getting site is forbidden for http sites even though it would work for https sites. Ping worked but POP3 did not. I tried many things but the got it to work as expected by changing the http redirector to not route the firewall connections to the web proxy(default setting) but to send them directly to the website. It doesn't make sense but I have to move on.

From my analysis of the event logs the install looks pretty clean.

Sick and distracted

It's been tough over the last couple of days. I have come down with the flu. I don't have a fever but my cough sounds nasty. I have canceled all of my outside activities. If that isn't a big enough problem, our plumbing has sprung a leak, our driveway has turned into a hockey rink, and my no brainer install of SBS2K3 has gone wrong. I seem to have a clean install of SBS2K3 but ISA is not allowing web proxy clients out. Radio and Quicken 2002 does not work for me with the regular firewall client.

SBS2K to SBS2K3 Upgrade

I really like to lay down fresh copies of operating systems and re-install the programs. This has been the tried and true practice for fixing serious W98 problems. W2K and WinXP have minimized my need to install fresh copies so I decided to try and see if a SBS2K to SBS2K3 upgrade would work. As expected it kind of worked but is unacceptable. I believe I met all of the prerequisites so there must be something else going on. I worked on the problems yesterday and have decided to install a clean copy today. The problems I was not able to get around are:

  1. Exchange failed tp complete during the upgrade. It had a problem with installing the DAV subcomponent which is related to registering exoledb.dll which is probably related to oledb32.dll not registered. I found a KB which suggested that I manually register several dll's including oledb32.dll. I got an error when I tried to register oledb32.dll.
  2. I could not upgrade the server components. I kept getting authenticode errors claiming a parameter error. It finally ended in a loop I had to use task manager to end.
  3. I was generally uncomfortable with the authenticode errors. The only time I expect to see them is when I am installing a third party hardware driver. These errors were popping up during the installation of microsoft software.