SharePoint 2013 configuration wizard fails at step 8 "failed to create sample data"

So, I have been scratching my head about this for a day before I finally found the solution.
For some reason, after installing updates on my SP2013 machine, running the SharePoint Config Wizard kept failing at this point.

DB was up and responding, everything seemed fine, central admin worked, I could even access my sites with no problem.

Then I found some message in a forum that made me wonder, would it be because I deleted a web application before the updates?

The answer seems to be yes.

I used to have a SharePoint web application on http port 80 that had a dummy site that no one used.

It appears that once I deleted it - I started getting this error.

The solution was simple:

Visit the central administration, create a web application on default port 80, and create an empty site collection in its root.

Run the wizard again, and now this step passes with no errors.

Good luck!

Edit: while writing this post, I encountered another strange scenario which produced this same error:
The W3SVC service stopped, and stopped all sites with it.
Start the service and sites resolved this issue.

Strangest error using power shell to connect to SharePoint online

My simple power shell script which I used to create large lists stopped working, reporting the following strange error: "The Application ID (AppID) for which the service ticket is requested does not exist on the system." After struggling with what appears to be a mess of people reporting it on different forums and blogs, even offering vudu solutions on how working from home would cause this issue, and running to the office might resolve it - I almost gave up. Until I noticed my login user name had a typo in it. Correcting it resolved the issue - so I guess this error message is actually a login user name / password are wrong... The error comes as soon as you try to create client context or pull any information. Not saying there couldn't be any other causes for this issue, just be sure to triple check you provided the correct login information... my code: $User = "user@domain.com" $SiteURL = "https://sometenant.sharepoint.com" $Password = Read-Host -Prompt "Please enter your password" -AsSecureString $Creds = New-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.SharePointOnlineCredentials($User,$Password) $Context = New-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.ClientContext($SiteURL) $Creds = New-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.SharePointOnlineCredentials($User,$Password) $Context.Credentials = $Creds ... Good luck!

App part does not show custom properties

Something very strange was happening on my dev sites on SharePoint online.

Suddenly, my app parts “lost” all their custom properties and when ever I would go to add/edit an app part to my pages I would only see the built in app part properties groups: appearance, layout and advanced:

For some reason, on my other non-dev tenants it always worked perfectly, this issue was only with my dev environments.

After reporting this to Microsoft, I got the following KB article back as a possible solution:

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Turn-scripting-capabilities-on-and-off-1f2c515f-5d7e-448a-9fd7-835da935584f?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US

It suggested a new feature that was introduced a while ago and turned on by default to everyone could be the cause for this issue.

It suggested to allow custom scripts on my site pages, and that should do the trick. Now, there is a note in that settings page saying it might take up to 24 hours for this change to take place after you visit the settings page, so did it work?

I did confirm this issue happens with all app parts that have custom properties, I have tested few other app parts from the store and they all exhibited the same behavior on my dev sites.

I guess I will test it tomorrow and have to update you… fingers crossed…