You receive a "The virtual server referenced here is not in the config database" error message when you unextend a virtual server in SharePoint Portal Server 2003 (827850)

SYMPTOMS

When you delete a portal site that is extended on more than one virtual server in your server farm, and then you unextend a virtual server that hosts the portal site, you may you receive the following error message, even though the virtual server is unextended successfully:

The virtual server referenced here is not in the config database.

CAUSE

This issue may occur if both of the following conditions are true:

Your server farm deployment of Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 has more than one Web front-end server, and the portal site that you want to delete is extended on more than one virtual server.
You delete the portal site before you unextend all the virtual servers that host the portal site on the Web front-end servers in your server farm.

WORKAROUND

The symptoms that are described in the "Symptoms" section of this article do not affect the functionality of SharePoint Portal Server 2003 or Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services. The virtual server is unextended successfully, and you can safely ignore the error message that appears after you unextend the virtual server. To verify that the virtual server is unextended, follow these steps:

Start SharePoint Portal Server Central Administration.
On the SharePoint Portal Server Central Administration page, in the Portal Site and Virtual Server Configuration area, click Extend an existing virtual server from the Virtual Server List page .
On the Virtual Server List page, in the list of virtual servers, verify that Extend appears next to the name of the virtual server that you unextended.

To avoid this issue, unextend all the virtual servers that host the portal site on the Web front-end servers in your server farm before you delete the portal site.

MORE INFORMATION

For more information about how to delete a portal site, see the "Deleting a Portal Site" topic in the "Managing Portals" section of the "Administration" chapter of the Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Administrator's Guide.

For more information about how to extend virtual servers, see the "Extending Virtual Servers" topic in the "Managing Sites" section of the "Administration" chapter of the Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Administrator's Guide. The Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Administrator's Guide (Administrator's Help.chm) is located in the Docs folder in the root of the SharePoint Portal Server 2003 CD.

For more information about SharePoint Portal Server, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

http://www.microsoft.com/office/sharepoint/prodinfo/default.mspx

For more information about Windows SharePoint Services, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/technologies/sharepoint/default.mspx