Look alive. Here comes a buzzard.

I’ve been wrestling with this error off and on for a while now.  It shows up in the event log of a production MOSS server I help manage.  Here is the error message:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Office SharePoint Server
Event Category: Publishing
Event ID: 5165
Date: 8/4/2009
Time: 12:57:51 PM
User: N/A
Computer: SERVER
Description:
Console Configuration File Error: File Not Found: The system cannot find the file specified. (Exception from HRESULT: 0×80070002)
For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

Googling for this error provides some information, but nothing definitive.  After turning up the logging level for the Publishing category, I was finally able to find enough information to locate the root cause.

This problem occurs when you are using a Master Page referencing SharePoint Publishing controls in a site collection that does not have the Publishing Infrastructure feature activated.  In my case, I was using a Master Page with the Publishing Console control on the page.  This Publishing Console was looking for some files in the Master Page gallery (_catalogs/masterpage/EditingMenu/CustomEditingMenu.xml etc) which don’t exist if the Publishing Infrastructure is not activated.  After I activated the Publishing Infrastructure, the errors went away.

However, ultimately the real solution was to remove the publishing features from the Master Page since I wasn’t using them anyway.

This problem came about when we re-used the master page from our main intranet on users’ My Sites.  Since the My Site doesn’t use the publishing features, every time someone hit a my site, these errors would show up in the event log.