Installing Service Pack 1 and Cumulative Updates on SharePoint 2010 Server

Recetly I had to install Service Pack 1 and latest cumulative updates for SharePoint 2010 Server for a client.

The task was very simple but it took a while to get it completed due to some issues with environment. I am writing this blog to help myself and my friends in future.

I did following:

1. Installed SharePoint 2010 Foundation Service Pack 1 (Reboot after installation)
2. You may need to install SharePoint 2010 Foundation Lang Pack Service Pack 1
3. Installed SharePoint 2010 Server Service Pack 1 (Reboot after installation)
4. Ran PSConfig Wizard (or you may need to run PSConfig wizar from PowerShell command with -force switch)

After performing above steps, when I access SharePoint Central Admin and site at port 80, I did not get anything (or white page)

I was wondering what is happening, could not see anything in ULS log or Event viewer. So one of my friend who looked as well after spending couple of hours, we figured out what had happened.

Follow below steps if you want to patch your SharePoint 2010 environment:

1. Take backup of all web.config (all web-apps, layouts and some web-services related config located at 14 hive\Templates\WebServices
2. If you are runing your server in VM, take snapshot so that you can go back to where it was.
3. Install SharePoint 2010 Foundation Service Pack 1
4. Install SharePoint 2010 Foundation Lang Pack Service Pack 1 (if any, do for all languages)
5. Install SharePoint 2010 Server Service Pack 1
6. Install SharePoint 2010 Server Lang Pack Service Pack 1 (if any, do for all languages)
7. Reboot server
8. Run PSConfig Wizar (run as administrator)
9. Check Central Admin and Site are working. If not follow below check list to rectiy your Farm
10. Install Cumulative Update
11. Reboot
12. Run PSConfig Wizard
13. Check Central Admin and Site are working. If not follow below check list to rectiy your Farm

Here is the check list if SharePoint Farm goes wrong:

1. Disable custom error off
•  Open web app and central admin web.config file and find "CustomErrors" and update value to CustomErrors = "Off"
• Find "CallStack" and update value to CallStack="true"
• Open web.config located at _layouts folder and do above steps.
2. If SharePoint is not showing anything, then you must check web.config files for duplicate entries or you may need to compare with previous version. You can use ExamXML or I have developed a tool (to validate or find duplicate elements in web.config), which I will upload soon.
3. After fixing web.config issue, you will see .net or SharePoint specific error and you can fix from there.
4. Check Application Pools are running
5. Check database can be ping from web front end

I will keep updating this list. If you guys have got similar list, you can add to comments.

Hope this will help you and save your time.