Sharepoint Woes

[ICTNUT]

Hi All,

Does anyone know to what extent GPO effects Windows Sharepoint Services and Sharepoint Portal 2003.

We have been using this for some time now without any problems but recently our students can no longer fill in any forms, the questions themselves appear but the actual form fields do not.

Nothing has changed at all on/with the SPS server or setup, but I am always "tweaking" GPO and as this is the only thing that has changed over the last few weeks I can only put it down to this.

I have posted on the Technet forums but as yet no replies or answers, this problem effectively renders sharepoint useless (we make extensive use of the surveys you see)

Any help would be great and would earn the winner a virtual beer :-)

[Geoff]

First culprit to check would be the IE security zone settings. Really, your sharepoint site(s) should be in the trusted zone though. I'd check if you've made any changes to the trusted zone settings and if the sharepoint site(s) are listed in the zone.

An obvious way to rule out IE GPO settings as the cause would be to try firefox and see if that breaks.

[ICTNUT]

Geoff,

The sharepoint sites are in the local and trusted zones which have been given very LOW security.

I will try your suggestion of FireFox and let you know.

[ICTNUT]

Well I have checked with FireFox under the same user that was having the above problems and it all works, going back into IE and it don't.

Now here comes the good bit, I then logged in as the same user but with GPO removed which resulted in everything working in both IE and FF.

This proves that there is a GPO restriction somewhere.

I have removed (set back to default) ALL IE settings in GPO for this user (is only subject to one GPO) but still no joy, I have a funny feeling this is not confined to the IE section of GPO.

Any ideas anyone.....

[Geoff]

Some GPO settings are not removed when you 'unset' them. This is known as Tattooing. You have to set the GPO settings to the other option rather than leaving them un-configured otherwise nothing will be undone.

[ICTNUT]

Definatley a GPO issue.

Have not been able to track down which one it was, I will continue to hunt though as I am sure it gonna happen again.

For now have created a new GPO for the students and rolled that out and all is now working again.

Funny thing is if you look at the old GPO vs the new one they are identical.

@Geoff:
Thanks for the input, I have heard of it but I know it as ghosting, anyhow you could be right however once I do get to the bottom of it I will post up the solution here.