Unable to login to SharePoint site using Internet Explorer after multiple login attempts!!!

So I had this problem where i was unable to login into my SharePoint site using Internet Explorer.  I was able to login using Firefox but not IE.  What would happen is the Windows login prompt would appear, and after entering the correct credentials it would still pop up again as if you entered the wrong creds…so after some research and help from my colleague Josh Carlisle I found out the solution at the following link:  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896861 and it explained the problem, cause and solution.  Hope this would help others out there to not waste time and nerves like I did :).

Login failed for user ‘NT AUTHORITY\ANONYMOUS LOGON’ error

I am working on my current FBA Management Suite implementation for a client, and everything worked perfectly on my local VM and on our Dev (Testing) environment.  But then after I deployed to Production I started getting these ‘Login failed for user ‘NTAUTHORITY\ANONYMOUS LOGON” errors that drove me nuts…After getting some help from our Senior Developer Josh Carlisle to track down the problem it turned out because on Dev and my local VM the Web Application and Database servers were on the same box, but production has them on different boxes so there was hopping involved.  When you login to the first box (Web App server) that is one hop, and then when you login to the second box (DB Server) thats another hop…and the problem was is that the identity is not kept and it will try to login as ‘NT AUTHORITY\ANONYMOUS’ and it doesnt have the permissions necessary to perform the required actions.  So as a work-around that worked for me, I wrapped my code that communicates with the DB server with the following:

SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges(delegate()
{
    //Your code
});

And it worked just fine for me because when you do that then SharePoint will use the App Pool account which originally had permissions.

SharePoint Site Error: Service Unavailable HTTP Error 503. The service is unavailable

I was working on a project and all of the sudden my SharePoint site and Central Admin started giving me the error ‘Service Unavailable  HTTP Error 503.  The service is unavailable’  and I was not able to access either of them.  I realized that I had just changed the password to the Identity account password and then this started happening.  So here is what I did to take care of the problem (It worked for me and not sure if this is the most efficient way of doing it):

1.  Open up IIS Manager and click on Application Pools.

2.  Locate your App Pool account and right-click on it and select ‘Advanced Settings’.

3.  Click on the right of the Identity box to change it (A window will pop up).

4.  Click on Set and simply retype your App Pool Identity in there with the new password.

Kind of wierd but worked for me after giving me a good headache.

Nas

SharePoint update!

I attended the keynote session this morning presented by Tom Rizzo, the Director of SharePoint at Microsoft, and it was very interesting actually, I enjoyed it a lot better than the SQL Server Keynote Monday night…A couple of things to mention:  The SharePoint Infrastructure update is up and available for download now for 32 and 64 bit OS, and you can check it out here.

He also talked about Windows Azure which is a cloud services operating system that serves as the development, service hosting and service management environment for the Azure Services Platform.  It is very interesting and you can read more about it here.

He also talked about Micrsoft SharePoint Online, I wasnt too sure about this part of the session, but you can check it out here.

At Las Vegas Developers Connections!

Yep it is that time of the year again, time to head to Vegas and attend the great sessions that are offered there and NOT loose any money gambling.  I am really excited about it, the first day has been ok so far, not as many SharePoint sessions as I have anticipated, and have been a bit disappointed with the SQL Server Keynote Monday night, but hopefully its going to get better as time progresses.  The biggest difference this year is that I am the only one from B&R Solutions that went to Vegas, I have my buddy Srinu who does part time work for us joining me, but the big guys that tore up Vegas last year missed out this time :).  So this is the first day of sessions I just hope it gets better because first day has been a bit below par for me so far we’ll see.  I will be blogging about the great sessions and the big ‘up-and-coming’ in the next few days as time permits.

Michael Lotter Speaking on Forms Server Development

I am looking forward to seeing my colleague Michael Lotter speak on Forms Server development because I have not worked with Info path services in MOSS Enterprise.  If you are not too familiar with Forms Server its an aspect of MOSS that allows InfoPath based forms to be deployed and filled out from a web browser as opposed to requiring the InfoPath client, and it also makes use of many other features within SharePoint such as workflow.  Michael has a ton of experience working with SharePoint, and is one of the best Forms Server Develoeprs in the country, and if you are interested in learning more about Forms Server, then you should not miss this event.  For more information on the event go to the SharePoint Developers Guild Site.

‘Type is not marked as Serializable’ error!

I have just installed Windows Server 2008 as my main OS to avoid the hassle of waiting for the VM to load up and the slow environment on the guest OS.  So the next task at hand was to configure my environment with MOSS 2007 with FBA configured, well that all went nice until I was trying to deploy my solution to my SharePoint site, then things started to get a bit interesting.  My previous environment I had WSS 3.0 running and I have my solution working on there like a charm, now I upgraded my environment to have MOSS 2007 (which is WSS 3.0 with a lot more features) and was ready to use my custom application pages that were deployed via wsp solution into my SharePoint site.  A couple of the custom app pages were using Gridviews in them, and they started giving me this weird serialization error:

Type ‘type‘ in Assembly ‘assembly‘ is not marked as serializable.   at System.Runtime.Serialization.FormatterServices.InternalGetSerializableMembers(RuntimeType type)
at System.Runtime.Serialization.FormatterServices.GetSerializableMembers(Type type, StreamingContext context)

and it was driving me absolutely nuts, I was checking my config files over and over to make sure that I didnt miss any of the FBA or profile related configurations, I was checking the database and my stored procedures over and over, and then debuged my code several times and had some help from my collegue Michael Lotter (SharePoint Dev and Admin genious), and nothing came up, I researched a bit about the error and blogs were talking about things not related to SharePoint at all so I started thinking thats something is really wrong with my code.  But then I read a article about a customer for Telerik complaining about a similar issue in the following url:

http://www.telerik.com/community/forums/thread/b311D-tdhgt.aspx

and in there they said something about the <sessionState > and the mode not being supported, so I went and compared my 2 web.config files again, and found that in WSS 3.0 my web.config for the my web app did not have that entry in there, but my new web.config for MOSS 2007 did.  So I commented that line out and it worked like a charm 🙂

Installed Windows Server 2008 64 bit on my Thinkpad T61!!!

So after a long time of putting up with loading up VM on my Vista and dealing with it being slow, I have decided to give Windows Server 2008 a try. So I will be able to do my developement and SharePoint work right of my host machine.  I have heard many conflicting reports about loosing a lot of functionality when running a Windows Server as my host, but I found a great tool that would do most of the work for you with a few clicks.  The name of the tool I believe is Serv08Convert10, and you can get it from the following link:

http://bink.nu/news/archive/tags/Windows+Server+2008/default.aspx

I have installed Windows Server 2008 (64 bit) and used the tool, and installed the drivers for the Thinkpad T61, and I got all the features that I had with my original OS (Vista Business 32 bit) even the ‘Finger Print Login’ feature.  So to anyone thinking about doing it I suggest you go for it and good luck.

Nas

Speaking at the Pittsburgh Code Camp on April 12th on Configureing FBA with MOSS 2007

Let me start this off by gladly saying that I will be speaking at the Pittsburgh Code Camp on April 12th, I will be speaking on the same subject that I spoke on previously: Configuring Forms Based Authentication with MOSS 2007 (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007), this is only my second time speaking so I thought I would keep it simple by speaking on the same subject and maybe go into a bit more details if time allows me to do so. I apologize for not posting my notes and steps on configuring FBA as I have promised before, I have been a little too busy with work.

You can read more about the Pittsburgh Code Camp and register using this link: http://www.pghdotnet.org/CodeCamp/

Nas

Speaking on FBA at the Roanoke Code Camp on March 1st

Yep that’s right, I am speaking at Roanoke Code Camp. (Special thanks to Michael Lotter) who suggested the idea to me when we were heading up to the Philly code camp about a month ago, and helped me learn everything about FBA that I know now. I will be speaking about FBA (Forms Based Authentication) and configuring it with MOSS 2007.

I have been tagging along with Michael Lotter for the last few months to Code Camps all over the east coast, and after a few times and seeing how rewarding of an experience it is to listen to all these great speakers share their knowledge, I decided why not do it. I have done a few MOSS 2007 installations and FBA configurations and I think I know enough to stand up there and talk about it for an hour or so 🙂

I will post my slides, notes, and code samples here after the code camp, I encourage everybody to take a look and try it out and let me know what you think.

Thanks guys,

Nas