Windows 7 Prompting for Authentication
When Accessing SharePoint Documents
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I’m still enjoying the experience as a new Windows 7 user. However, one of the problems I
ran into recently was the repeated and constant prompting for username and password when
accessing a document in my SharePoint repository. Actually, I was getting prompted twice
despite the fact the SharePoint server is on my local network and in the same domain. Once
for the initial SharePoint logon and the second when accessing office documents in a
document repository. The first prompt was an easy fix and was due to the fact I access my
SharePoint Site using its Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) at sharepoint.company.com.
As a result, IE believed the local SharePoint server to be on the Internet and thus considered
in the Internet Zone.
To fix this:
1. Open IE, Select Tools –>Internet Options -> Security Tab and Select Sites
2. Ensure “Automatically detect intranet network” is checked and click Advanced
3. Add your SharePoint server’s fully qualified domain name. In my case, I chose to use an
asterisk as a wildcard (*.companyname.com) to represents all hosts in my local intranet.
WARNING: Be very careful when using a wildcard on this setting to ensure your credentials
are only used to connect to trusted servers on your “internal” network and not on the
Internet. As an example, you would never want to use *companyname.com which can be
easily spoofed and lead to passing internal domain credentials to a non-trusted external
system.
4. In addition, when back on the Security tab, Click Custom Level and scroll down to the
bottom of the Local Intranet Zone settings and ensure “Automatic logon only in Intranet
zone” is checked.
5. Close and re-open your browser. You should no longer be prompted when accessing your
local domain’s SharePoint server.
Well, that took care of issue number one but I was still getting prompted when opening an
Office 2007 document from a SharePoint Document Repository. However, once the
credentials are entered, the prompt goes away… for a while. Actually, I believe the
credentials are simply not cached between logons and return when I access the document
repository following logons or reboots. Anyway, this turned out to be due to the fact
Microsoft changed the way online documents are accessed via Web Distributed Authoring
and Versioning (WebDav). According to KB 943280, a windows Vista Client will be
prompted for a username and password under the following conditions:
1. A proxy server is not configured in Internet Explorer
2. WebDav is used to access a fully qualified domain name site
Well, I can tell you that I did not have a proxy server configured and my SharePoint
document repository was certainly a WebDav site accessed via FQDN
Although the KB article is meant for Vista, Windows 7 is essentially Vista version 2 so I
figured it would hold the key. However, the hotfix listed in the article would not be applicable
as it was included way back with Vista SP1 anyway and Windows 7 was bound to include
that functionality.
Anyway, the fix for this is as follows:
1. Open Registry Editor to:
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\WebClient\Parameters
2. Add a new key using Multi-String Value
3. Enter AuthForwardServerList for the new key name
4. Edit the new key and enter the FQDN of the SharePoint or WebDav Server.
(In my case, I used *.companyname.com again. )
5. Close Registry editor, go to services in Computer Management and restart the WebClient
service.
Alternatively, you can simply open a command prompt with elevated permissions and enter
the following line (edited with your server info of course):
reg add HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\WebClient\Parameters /v
AuthForwardServerList /t REG_MULTI_SZ /d *.companyname.com
You can restart WebClient in the same command prompt, type: Net Stop WebClient && Net
Start WebClient
That’s it, seamless passthrough authentication to SharePoint!
Reference: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/943280/en-us