Feature Admin Clean Up Tool

This is a very useful features removal tool for SharePoint admin.

Sometimes features get orphaned from site collections and although looks like it has disappeared from the Site Collection settings, CA and has been un-

installed, it can leave itself with an entry somewhere in the COntent DB.  This can become problematic when using standard MS migration process from SharePoint 2007 to 2010.

Sometimes you will be surprised what features that may had been in-activated months ago are still showing up in the Content DB !!!!!

This tool can help find and remove these left bebind features.  Great stuff.

http://featureadmin.codeplex.com/

NB.. Use with care on any Live SharePoint WFE as deleting a feature accidentally can result in problems.

NB.. There are some items that even it can't clean out.  So it is not 100% perfect.  We have a couple of features that have been left in the DB yet, everything else removed.  It says it deleted them but then they show again when you reload the site collection's features.

Basically, we found out never un-install a feature from the farm prematurely even if you don't need it anymore and have deleted all sites that use its functionality.

If it was not deactivated from the site collection first, then retracted from the web application in the CA.  As doing so leaves you in this mess.  You will find the references just cannot be deleted by the cool tool above or even if you use 

stsadm -o deactivatefeature -id << guid of the feature >> -force

stsadm -o uninstallfeature -id << guid of the feature >> -force

These commands won't work because the un-installation removes the feature.xml for the feature in the 12\Template directory.   This will cause major problems in scenarios where you need the Content DB cleaned for SharePoint 2010 upgrades.

Well was Konged seriously...