Sharepoint 2013 Log in as a different user missing, a simple workaround.

In their infinite wisdom, Microsoft decided to remove the ‘sign in as another user‘ option from the UI. For consultants and developers who need to test their solutions in an ongoing manner, user accounts need to be switched in order to test the myriad of permission issues sometimes experienced by users.

After some extensive research I have found a solution:

Simply append the following behind your URL – /_layouts/closeConnection.aspx?loginasanotheruser=true

e.g http://yoursite/_layouts/closeConnection.aspx?loginasanotheruser=true

Voila! You can now carry on as usual.

A system restart from a previous installation or update is pending when installing SharePoint 2013

I recently came across this annoying issue when installing the SharePoint 2013 preview:

Even though all the pre-requisites have been installed, this error persists after numerous system reboots.

To cure this problem, a registry entry needs to be deleted. Ensure that a full system backup is performed prior to changing this registry setting.

The below fix should get you back on track in no time:

Open the Registry editor and find the following entry:
“HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager”
Rename the “PendingFileRenameOperations” value to “PendingFileRenameOperations2”

Reboot the server and re-run the installation.

Hopefully Microsoft will have this issue sorted out by the time the full release is available.

Links to the SharePoint 2013 Pre-requisites

As you may know, SharePoint 2013 can be installed either on Server 2008 R2 or on Server 2012. If you choose to install SharePoint on Server 2008 R2, you will need to install pre-requisites as with SharePoint Server 2010.

Mostly when installing SharePoint at a client site, their servers do not have access to the internet and the prerequisiteinstaller.exe tool cannot be run to automatically download and install the pre-requisites. In this case, the pre-requisites need to installed offline.

If need be, this process can be automated using the following Powershell Script:

http://wellytonian.com/2012/07/sharepoint-2013-pre-requisites-downloader/

The download locations for the files are located on this Technet Article.

Below I have listed the complete list of the SharePoint 2013 pre-requisites:

• Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5
• Windows Management Framework 3.0 (CTP2)
• Microsoft SQL Server 2008 r2 Native Client
• Windows Identity Foundation (KB974405)
• Microsoft Sync Framework Runtime v1.0 SP1 (x64)
• Windows Server AppFabric
• Windows Identity Extensions
• Microsoft Information Protection and Control Client
• Microsoft WCF Data Services 5.0
• CU Package 1 for Microsoft AppFabric 1.1 for Windows Server (KB2671763)

Sources:
technet.microsoft.com

Olivier Carpentier’s Blog