Delete a Project didn't work correctly - What now?

[J Baird]

I see that yet another person has had the "delete a Project" function hang
in Project Server. I have 4 "sort of deleted" projects showing up in
Project Server. The delete function hung, and now I can't get rid of them.
They're on the Projects page, and some tasks are still in the server, but
they don't show up on the [Clean up Microsoft Project Server] web page.

Does Microsoft have a Knowledge Base article on this yet? How can we get
rid of the "sort of, but not really deleted" files in Project Server?

 

[Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]]

Jill:

Failures like this generally have root causes. There's no bug that causes
this. Sometimes this happens because of network problems, other times
because of database corruption. I'd swear that sometimes it happens because
of cosmic rays penetrating the datacenter, but let's not go there.<g>

It's difficult to respond to queries like this because you haven't done your
investigative work, or at least you're not reporting anything specific for
us to go on. The best we can do when someone asks simply "why doesn't this
work" is to respond with "because it's broken." So, why don't we start with
the error logs on your server. What got written to the security and
application logs on the date and time that you attempted the deletes?

 

[J Baird]

You did not provide a solution as to how to fully delete the "partially
deleted" project out of the SQL server.

The project was very large, and we have been experiencing the problem
documented in KB 306290, so I think the two problems may be related - I'm
waiting for the hot fix. Small schedules delete perfectly. The project
data is removed from all of the SQL tables. The problem files still have
data hanging around all over the database, with no way to remove it.

I've put in a call to Microsoft Tech Support, hoping to find a solution
other than going through each SQL table and manually deleting any reords
that are part of the partially deleted schedule files.

If a computer crashed, a network went down, the system timed out, or the MSP
server was buggy, this could occur in a system during a delete. After
trying out some manual deletes in a development server, I did not find
Referential Integrity links between tables. For example, when I delete a
web project record from MSP_Web_Projects, the web project's records are not
automatically deleted in MSP_Web_Assignments. When I delete a project
record from MSP_Projects, the project's records are not automatically
deleted in MSP_Tasks. I'm I'm hoping that Microsoft had a script to run,
that will remove the junk records.

Jill:

Failures like this generally have root causes. There's no bug that causes
this. Sometimes this happens because of network problems, other times
because of database corruption. I'd swear that sometimes it happens because
of cosmic rays penetrating the datacenter, but let's not go there.<g>

It's difficult to respond to queries like this because you haven't done your
investigative work, or at least you're not reporting anything specific for
us to go on. The best we can do when someone asks simply "why doesn't this
work" is to respond with "because it's broken." So, why don't we start with
the error logs on your server. What got written to the security and
application logs on the date and time that you attempted the deletes?

I see that yet another person has had the "delete a Project" function hang
in Project Server. I have 4 "sort of deleted" projects showing up in
Project Server. The delete function hung, and now I can't get rid of them.
They're on the Projects page, and some tasks are still in the server, but
they don't show up on the [Clean up Microsoft Project Server] web page.

Does Microsoft have a Knowledge Base article on this yet? How can we get
rid of the "sort of, but not really deleted" files in Project Server?

 

[Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]]

Jill:

As you've discovered, referential integrity is maintained programmatically.
I don't think MS has any scripts to offer, but if you've got a support case
going... you never know. Meanwhile, you didn't give us the event log errors.

You did not provide a solution as to how to fully delete the "partially
deleted" project out of the SQL server.

The project was very large, and we have been experiencing the problem
documented in KB 306290, so I think the two problems may be related - I'm
waiting for the hot fix. Small schedules delete perfectly. The project
data is removed from all of the SQL tables. The problem files still have
data hanging around all over the database, with no way to remove it.

I've put in a call to Microsoft Tech Support, hoping to find a solution
other than going through each SQL table and manually deleting any reords
that are part of the partially deleted schedule files.

If a computer crashed, a network went down, the system timed out, or the MSP
server was buggy, this could occur in a system during a delete. After
trying out some manual deletes in a development server, I did not find
Referential Integrity links between tables. For example, when I delete a
web project record from MSP_Web_Projects, the web project's records are not
automatically deleted in MSP_Web_Assignments. When I delete a project
record from MSP_Projects, the project's records are not automatically
deleted in MSP_Tasks. I'm I'm hoping that Microsoft had a script to run,
that will remove the junk records.

Jill:

Failures like this generally have root causes. There's no bug that causes
this. Sometimes this happens because of network problems, other times
because of database corruption. I'd swear that sometimes it happens because
of cosmic rays penetrating the datacenter, but let's not go there.<g>

It's difficult to respond to queries like this because you haven't done your
investigative work, or at least you're not reporting anything specific for
us to go on. The best we can do when someone asks simply "why doesn't this
work" is to respond with "because it's broken." So, why don't we start with
the error logs on your server. What got written to the security and
application logs on the date and time that you attempted the deletes?

I see that yet another person has had the "delete a Project" function hang
in Project Server. I have 4 "sort of deleted" projects showing up in
Project Server. The delete function hung, and now I can't get rid of them.
They're on the Projects page, and some tasks are still in the server, but
they don't show up on the [Clean up Microsoft Project Server] web page.

Does Microsoft have a Knowledge Base article on this yet? How can we get
rid of the "sort of, but not really deleted" files in Project Server?

 

[J Baird]

Actually, I've done a lot of investigative work. This is a problem that
others have experienced when deleting large files.

Microsoft has now provided me with a tool to delete very large projects from
my server.

Jill:

Failures like this generally have root causes. There's no bug that causes
this. Sometimes this happens because of network problems, other times
because of database corruption. I'd swear that sometimes it happens because
of cosmic rays penetrating the datacenter, but let's not go there.<g>

It's difficult to respond to queries like this because you haven't done your
investigative work, or at least you're not reporting anything specific for
us to go on. The best we can do when someone asks simply "why doesn't this
work" is to respond with "because it's broken." So, why don't we start with
the error logs on your server. What got written to the security and
application logs on the date and time that you attempted the deletes?

I see that yet another person has had the "delete a Project" function hang
in Project Server. I have 4 "sort of deleted" projects showing up in
Project Server. The delete function hung, and now I can't get rid of them.
They're on the Projects page, and some tasks are still in the server, but
they don't show up on the [Clean up Microsoft Project Server] web page.

Does Microsoft have a Knowledge Base article on this yet? How can we get
rid of the "sort of, but not really deleted" files in Project Server?