I love working with SharePoint Server because there is never a dull moment on the job; the product is so rich and varied, and requires considerable knowledge of other systems and services, such as Active Directory, DNS, networking, SSL, SQL Server, etc. Working with SharePoint Server is a guarantee of learning something new nearly every day. On this day I discover a truly unique SharePoint error message.

I am performing routine maintenance on a SharePoint 2016 farm, cleaning up deprecated service accounts, to bring the farm into alignment with our project’s platform architecture security model. Using Central Admin (running on port 2016 of course!) at one point I need to refresh a page like so many times in a day but this time it comes with a little surprise, the page returns completely blank, with the bare minimum possible HTML. Whoa, what is going on?!

Well, I think, maybe it is just transient, so I hit the F5 refresh to get a clearer sense of the status of my SharePoint farm. Ooo ee, HTTP 404 Not Found. Eek, Central Admin is DEAD!

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