skater coder

Did you customize your application master pages and get this error while trying to delete list columns?

Unable to validate data. at System.Web.Configuration.MachineKeySection.GetDecodedData(Byte[] buf, Byte[] modifier, Int32 start, Int32 length, Int32& dataLength)  
 
at System.Web.UI.ObjectStateFormatter.Deserialize(String inputString)  

Ok that probably means you have a search box in the template which is messing things up, just remove it or hide it, and that will do the trick!

• Overview: Office SharePoint Server server farm architecture
• Overview: Configuring server farms
• Securing server farms
• Configuring performance options
• Operations and management
• Capacity planning
• Search architecture and configuration
• Backing up, restoring, high availability, and disaster recovery for Office SharePoint Server server farms

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc299032.aspx

Information about the Maintenance Plan Wizard in SQL Server 2005 and about tasks that administrators can perform against SharePoint databases

How to defragment Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 databases and SharePoint Server 2007 databases

Run command “stsadm.exe -o upgrade -inplace -url http://{central%20administration%20site}/”

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Windows SharePoint Services 3
Event Category: Topology
Event ID: 5617
Date: 10/11/2007
Time: 12:14:02 PM
User: N/A
Computer: ESSSHAREPOINT20
Description:The schema version (3.0.149.0) of the database on Servername\OfficeServers is not consistent with the expected database schema version (3.0.151.0) on . Connections to this database from this server have been blocked to avoid data loss. Upgrade the web front end or the content database to ensure that these versions match.
For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

If it still doesn’t work, try

http://blogs.msdn.com/joelo/archive/2007/09/26/hotfixes-service-packs-and-password-resets.aspx

Part 1
http://blogs.msdn.com/martinkearn/archive/2007/04/23/configuring-kerberos-for-sharepoint-2007-part-1-base-configuration-for-sharepoint.aspx

Part 2
http://blogs.msdn.com/martinkearn/archive/2007/04/27/configuring-kerberos-for-sharepoint-2007-part-2-excel-services-and-sql-analysis-services.aspx

Bob Fox’s
http://bobfox.net/spblog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=55

http://kalsing.blogspot.com/2006/11/create-custom-list-form-for-sharepoint.html

http://msmvps.com/blogs/shane/archive/2007/10/18/please-install-the-sharepoint-updates-on-your-server.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/joelo/archive/2007/10/16/sharepoint-faq-on-dst-and-october-9th-public-update.aspx

That pesky SQL Server 2005 error

http://www.corkchop.com/journal/2007/3/28/error-18456-severity-14-state-16.html

http://www.virtual-generations.com/2007/01/28/sharepoint-and-sql-server-error-18456/

In my case, I had to delete the SQL Server Agent job in SQL Server Management Studio