Sharepoint 2010 User Profile Incremental Synchronization fails

User Profile Incremental Synchronization fails with stopped-server error if users upload and then delete the picture from 'My Profile' page

In a SharePoint Server 2010 environment, you have configured the User Profile Service Application to export User Profile Pictures to Active Directory by
mapping the 'Picture' property in SharePoint to the 'ThumbnailPhoto' attribute in AD.

one of the users uploads his profile picture through the 'My Profile' page and immediately changes his/her mind and deletes the picture.

In this scenario, subsequent incremental profile synchronization fails consistently with event ID 6801 until a full synchronization is run. In a production environment it is possible that this scenario will repeat for multiple users (if they upload and then delete the profile picture), so we can expect to see the failure very often. Additionally, you can see the following error logged in the event viewer

Event Log:

Log Name:        Application
Source:            FIMSynchronizationService
Date: 
Event ID:          6801
Task Category:  Server
Level:               Error
Keywords:         Classic
User:                N/A
Computer: 

Description:

The extensible extension returned an unsupported error.

The stack trace is:

 "System.Net.WebException: The remote server returned an error: (404) Not Found.
  at System.Net.WebClient.DownloadDataInternal(Uri address, WebRequest& request)
  at System.Net.WebClient.DownloadData(Uri address)
  at Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.ManagementAgent.ProfileImportExportExtension.DownloadPictures(ProfileChangeData[] profiles)
  at Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.ManagementAgent.ProfileImportExportExtension.Microsoft.MetadirectoryServices.IMAExtensibleFileImport.
 GenerateImportFile(String fileName, String connectTo, String user, String password, ConfigParameterCollection configParameters, Boolean fFullImport,
 TypeDescriptionCollection types, String& customData)

 Cause

The events are processed sequentially to get a picture URL instead of the actual picture. Since the 'Add' event comes before the remove event, we try to download the picture and fail (it does not exist anymore). Hense profile import fails.

Resolution :

This issue has been addressed in the October 2012 Cumulative Update for SharePoint Server 2010 which can downloaded from

October CU 2012 - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2687564
Hotfix package -   http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2687545