SharePoint – Cannot Login!

I went to login to a SharePoint (MOSS 2007) based website this morning to carry out some basic page updates. After entering the normal domain\username and password, I was again prompted for the credentials, which I knew I had entered correctly.

After checking with my collgues that the password had not been changed, I logged onto the server via remote desktop and checked the event log, which had quite a few of these:

Windows cannot determine the user or computer name. (There are no more endpoints available from the endpoint mapper

Solution: Remove the machine from the domain (i.e. Join it to a workgroup), reboot, rejoin the domain (Which re-creates the computer account), reboot. After doing this I was able to login without issue.

Requests for any .aspx files return a 404

I’ve just had to de-install and re-install IIS on my development VM (Windows Server 2003, IIS 6). After doing so, I noticed that any requests for a .ASPX returned a 404 – Requests for images, html files etc were AOK. I then rememered that ASP.Net is of course an add-on to Windows Server 2003, so re-installing IIS resulted in loss of .Net functionality.

The solution was in two parts:

1) Open a command prompt, run ‘aspnet_regiis -i’ This will install ASP.Net onto Internet Information server.
(aspnet_regiis.exe is located in c:\windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727)

2) Open IIS management console, under ‘Services and Applications’ expand ‘Internet Information Server’ then click on ‘Web Service Extensions’. You should see, on the right hand side a list of available extensions – These are file extensions associations to binaries/executables. Hopefully one of the options (that would not have been visible prior to completing step 1) will be ASP.Net v2.0.50727 – Click on this, then click ‘Allow’

All being well, ASP.Net web forms (.aspx files) will now execute.

Windows Server 2003 – How to manage Active Directory?

To manage AD (Active Directory) on a Windows Server 2003 Server that is not a domain controller, you need to register the ‘Active Directory Schema Manager MMC (Microsoft Management Console) snap-in.

This is a simple task:

Click Start > Run, type: ‘REGSVR32 SCHMMGMT.DLL’ and hit enter.

You should see a confirmation message.

You can now load MMC and add the required AD snapin. To load MMC, Start > Run, type: ‘MMC’ and hit enter.

When its loaded, go to File > Add/Remove Snap-in then click Add, select the desired snap-in from the list (Most probably you are looking for Active Directory Users and Computers), click Add, then OK.

You can the MMC with the snap-in(s) you selected as an MSC file.