Menu items disappearing - DNN 4.5.3 and 4.5.5

Dear John

It happens from time to time that the menu (including admin and host) of one of 4 portals dissapears almost completely. I had the same problem with the new DNN 4.5.3 installation. I hoped it would get solved with the upgrade to DNN 4.5.5. But the problem still exists. The Admin environement doesn't work anymore, for example: I'm not able to click on the Portal icon.

The event logs shows the following General Exception Error:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
General Exception
AssemblyVersion: 04.05.05
PortalID: 8
PortalName: GVZ Gebäudeversicherung Kanton Zürich - Kantonale Feuerpolizei
UserID: -1
UserName:
ActiveTabID: 249
ActiveTabName: Home
RawURL: /Feuerpolizei/default.aspx
AbsoluteURL: /Feuerpolizei/default.aspx
AbsoluteURLReferrer: http://gvzint.vritec.ch/Rechtsgrundlagen/tabid/112/Default.aspx
UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; de; rv:1.8.0.12) Gecko/20070508 Firefox/1.5.0.12
DefaultDataProvider: DotNetNuke.Data.SqlDataProvider, DotNetNuke.SqlDataProvider
ExceptionGUID: 4c6de7a4-fcd5-4262-a7ad-a7b74c29d7ac
InnerException: Unhandled Error:
FileName:
FileLineNumber: 0
FileColumnNumber: 0
Method: System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary`2.Insert
StackTrace:
Message: System.Exception: Unhandled Error: ---> System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object. at System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary`2.Insert(TKey key, TValue value, Boolean add) at DotNetNuke.Entities.Modules.ModuleController.GetModuleByDefinition(Int32 PortalId, String FriendlyName) at DotNetNuke.Entities.Portals.PortalSettings.GetSiteSetting(Int32 PortalId, String SettingName) at DotNetNuke.HttpModules.UrlRewriteModule.OnBeginRequest(Object s, EventArgs e) at System.Web.HttpApplication.SyncEventExecutionStep.System.Web.HttpApplication.IExecutionStep.Execute() at System.Web.HttpApplication.ExecuteStep(IExecutionStep step, Boolean& completedSynchronously) --- End of inner exception stack trace ---
Source:
Server-Name: WEBIISDEV

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
General Exception Admin
AssemblyVersion: 04.05.05
PortalID: 8
PortalName: GVZ Gebäudeversicherung Kanton Zürich - Kantonale Feuerpolizei
UserID: 2
UserName: admin
ActiveTabID: 283
ActiveTabName: Security Roles
RawURL: /feuerpolizei/Admin/SecurityRoles/tabid/283/Default.aspx
AbsoluteURL: /FEUERPOLIZEI/Default.aspx
AbsoluteURLReferrer: http://gvzint.vritec.ch/feuerpolizei/Admin/SiteLog/tabid/286/Default.aspx
UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; de; rv:1.8.1.6) Gecko/20070725 Firefox/2.0.0.6
DefaultDataProvider: DotNetNuke.Data.SqlDataProvider, DotNetNuke.SqlDataProvider
ExceptionGUID: 051a4dc1-b53f-47b4-b677-29e72f402840
InnerException: The control with ID 'Roles_UP' requires a ScriptManager on the page. The ScriptManager must appear before any controls that need it.
FileName:
FileLineNumber: 0
FileColumnNumber: 0
Method: System.Web.UI.UpdatePanel.get_ScriptManager
StackTrace:
Message: System.InvalidOperationException: The control with ID 'Roles_UP' requires a ScriptManager on the page. The ScriptManager must appear before any controls that need it. at System.Web.UI.UpdatePanel.get_ScriptManager() at System.Web.UI.UpdatePanel.RegisterPanel() at System.Web.UI.UpdatePanel.OnInit(EventArgs e) at System.Web.UI.Control.InitRecursive(Control namingContainer) at System.Web.UI.Control.InitRecursive(Control namingContainer) at System.Web.UI.Control.InitRecursive(Control namingContainer) at System.Web.UI.Control.InitRecursive(Control namingContainer) at System.Web.UI.Control.AddedControl(Control control, Int32 index) at System.Web.UI.ControlCollection.Add(Control child) at DotNetNuke.UI.Skins.Skin.InjectModule(Control objPane, ModuleInfo objModule, PortalSettings PortalSettings)
Source:
Server-Name: WEBIISDEV
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Somebody described a similar problem:
http://www.dotnetnuke.com/Default.aspx?tabid=795&forumid=-1&scope=posts&threadid=141399


After booting the server or restarting the application (by modifying the web.config) the menu items gets displayed again.

Do you have an idea what is going wrong here or how one could fix this DNN bug?

Thanks,
Patrick

Hi Patrick,

I have seen several reports of this behaviour. Hopefully the core team will take a close look at what the problem is.
I have added a comment to the issue here:
http://support.dotnetnuke.com/issue/ViewIssue.aspx?id=5943

The problem is that it will be hard to track down by just debugging, but if they go back and look at changes in recent versions they should be able to find out where the problem was introduced.

Hi John

Thank you for your fast answer. You wrote that it might  have to do with the tabinfo collection which is getting corrupted in cache.

Because I'm using PageBlaster do you think it could help if I would set the Performance setting to "No Caching" within the host settings?

Patrick