So, you are running SharePoint 2010 Beta2, you have built sites, done some custom development and also deployment and then suddenly one fine day you get an error like this:
I can hear you shouting how the hell this error message is useful for me!
Well, there is nothing to panic here as SharePoint logs every error message. All you need is the ULS Viewer from MSDN Code Gallery. This is great tool which allows you to browse through the SharePoint logs and works great with SharePoint 2010. If you are getting an error, something like in the above screenshot, SharePoint would have logged it back in its log file with more technical information. It is just not visible to the end user.
So, go ahead, download the ULS Viewer and open it.
Open the ULS log from File | Open From | ULS or you can press Ctrl + U
Wait for few seconds (to a minute) for the ULS Viewer to load the logs.
This will open the real time log. Remember, you can also open a log file than the real time ULS log which would be the latest log file. The log files are located at C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\LOGS – So, make sure you open the right log file, else you wont be able to filter the results as described below.
From the error message, grab the Correlation ID, in our case it is c7832894-4b2d-4bc3-9517-430501c581ec
In the ULS viewer, click the Filter icon (
)
Select Correlation from Field – Select Equals from Operation – Enter the Correlation ID in the Value
Click OK button and you should see the filtered results
Now the results are way much better and very precise (some of my error messages below):
Name=Request (GET:http://demo2010a:80/Lists/CreateBlogSiteWorkflow-ListInstance1/AllItems.aspx)
Failed to determine the setup path of the list schema for feature {C28066FF-F2C4-4D05-B63C-39CC1E0349EA}, list template 107.
So, make sure you get hold of the Correlation ID and the time of the error to open the proper log file when such errors occur. This would be very helpful when you are reporting bugs or asking help at the MSDN SharePoint 2010 forums.