Critical Information about the SharePoint Server 2010 October Cumulative Update

*** Update *** 11/18/2010 - The issues have now been resolved and the links to the revised updates are now available.  The KB number is unchanged, but the Revision Number on the article is 2.0 and the version of the patch is 14.0.5128.5003.  Sorry for any inconvenience caused.

Please see the posting on the SharePoint blog regarding an issue recently discovered with the October CU for SharePoint Server 2010 that also affects Project Server 2010 - https://blogs.msdn.com/b/sharepoint/archive/2010/11/05/critical-information-about-the-sharepoint-server-2010-october-cumulative-update.aspx. The current recommendation is to not load the CU, and SharePoint have also released details of a workaround if you have already loaded the October CU -  https://blogs.msdn.com/b/sharepoint/archive/2010/11/06/details-and-workaround.aspx.

Packages Impacted

The Cumulative Update packages affected are the Server Packages for SharePoint Foundation, SharePoint Server and Project Server 2010, specifically;

  • SharePoint Server Package 2394320
  • Project Server Package 2394322

The downloads for both of these packages have been removed from our servers. If you have already downloaded them you SHOULD NOT install them. They will be republished.

Issue Details

The October Cumulative Update for the packages listed above makes some changes and updates to the user profile database. Unfortunately there are certain situations where this update does not complete as expected and leaves the update in an inconsistent state. This causes issues with several SharePoint features that use the User Profile Application such as MySites, People and Expertise Search & Ratings.

For details of the workaround please see the SharePoint blog above.

This issue affects the SharePoint features that use the User Profile Application – so does not directly impact Project Server 2010 functionality – but obviously many of our Project customers may be using these features.