SharePoint 2010 - setting peoplepicker-searchadforests, unable to remove property and get <Property Exist="No"> after setting with no -url param

Question

Interesting behavior that I was hoping someone could help with.

Trying to adjust the "peoplepicker-searchadforests" property using the stsadm command in Powershell, I ran the below command:

stsadm -o setproperty -pn peoplepicker-searchadforests -pv "domain:2NDDOMAIN"

No -url param was sent in

It properly set and now I get the following when running getproperty:

stsadm -o getproperty -pn peoplepicker-searchadforests
<Property Exist="Yes" Value="domain:2NDDOMAIN" />

If I attempt to clear it, this is where things fall apart:

stsadm -o setproperty -pn peoplepicker-searchadforests -pv ""
or
stsadm -o setproperty -pn peoplepicker-searchadforests -pv

results with a getproperty output of:

<Property Exist="Yes" Value="" />

I'm unable to get Exist to equal "No".

If I run the above commands, but send in a -url value, this problem doesn't happen and I'm able to successfully remove the property.

Example:

stsadm -o setproperty -pn peoplepicker-searchadforests -pv "domain:2NDDOMAIN" -url http://our.sharepointsite.com

results in:

<Property Exist="Yes" Value="domain:2NDDOMAIN" />

and if I do:

stsadm -o setproperty -pn peoplepicker-searchadforests -pv "" -url http://our.sharepointsite.com

I get:

<Property Exist="No" />

However, with this initial one, I can't find a way to get the Exist value to be "No". Trying to use

stsadm -o setproperty -pn peoplepicker-searchadforests -pv "" -url
or
stsadm -o setproperty -pn peoplepicker-searchadforests -pv "" -url ""

only results in an error because it's not a valid/properly formed URL.

Is there a registry value, web.config file, or anything I could manually edit to remove/delete this property so that I get ?

The worst part is that doing this seemed to solve the problem I ran the command for in the first place (have People Picker in SP2010 search the current and a second domain we have). But I can't do the same on our production server if I'm not able to undo it if the same doesn't happen there.

Answer 1

I was able to remove the Deleted Names from the People Picker, when I select checked Delete Form Data under Internet Options to delete Browser History. Once this was done the deleted names were no longer displayed.

Well almost all gone, this did not delete external usernames.

Answer 2

Since this is a per Web Application property, did you try to run command supplying URLs for each Web Application which you have in the farm (including Central Admin)? Alternatively, did you clear configuration cache?

If you don't see a problem in your local environment test, as this is per Web Application setting, I would believe you'll be good in production as well.