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SharePoint Intermittent 403 Forbidden Errors

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I recently encountered intermittent 403 Forbidden errors on a Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) site.  Most of the site would work, but when users accessed certain functions such as uploading a document or adding calendar items, they would receive a 403 forbidden error.  The problem appeared to be intermittent, however I was able to identify a pattern to the behavior.  If an administrator accessed the feature that caused the error, subsequent requests from non-administrators would succeed.  This behavior is typically associated with lack of permissions to the temporary folder where Asp.Net assemblies are Just In Time compiled.  To troubleshoot the issue, I used the filemon utility. 

 

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Filemon identified that the w3wp.exe was attempting to access the /bin directory in the context of the requesting user account through impersonation.

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A quick check of the bin directory permissions revealed only administrators could access the bin directory, so the solution is to add server\users Read & Execute, List Folder Contents and Read permissions.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    May 23, 2008
    PingBack from http://www.travel-hilarity.com/airline_travel/?p=4716

  • Anonymous
    May 23, 2008
    Thanks, I had this problem on some wikis after a system restore/reinstall. Stefan

  • Anonymous
    June 03, 2008
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    July 13, 2008
    I encounter similar problem. The solution you mentioned works fine! Thank you!!

  • Anonymous
    July 23, 2008
    Worked for me too on one of my customers case. Thank You!!

  • Anonymous
    September 19, 2008
    Thanks a lot for this, I was pulling out hair trying to solve this, didnt know where to begin. You saved my life.

  • Anonymous
    December 08, 2008
    I have the same issue. But i dont know why it is a permission issue. There are certain pages that work and there are some that dont. And all of them are using the same DLL. My scenario is that i have custom ASPX pages that i have put into a Sharepoint site. If the Admin logs in then it works fine. But if a non-admin logs in then it throws the 403 Forbidden error. Please let me know if there is anything else i am missing. I dont know if i can add all the users and give them read access to the bin.

  • Anonymous
    December 08, 2008
    As you have entioned in your article, if i ive permissions to the folder containing the web config then the application works. But why should i give this? Is there any other way of tacklng this?

  • Anonymous
    December 16, 2008
    Thanks a lot. It is worked fine for me.

  • Anonymous
    December 17, 2008
    Thanks for the solution.  One of my SharePoint users in Canada has been really frustrated with this problem.  I kept giving her additional permissions in SharePoint, added her to higher level sites, and it would appear that I had fixed the problem.  However, the next day it was back again.  Your explanation helped me understand why it was intermittant and the changes to the permissions on the bin folder fixed it.

  • Anonymous
    April 07, 2009
    Great Solution, I was concerned for several weeks. tried everything possible but had not idea about FileMon.... Congratulations...

  • Anonymous
    April 13, 2009
    Hi John, Some developers of ours also ran into the same issue. Although the mentioned solution works, I am wondering why this is occuring with some web parts and are others working just fine. Were you using impersonation in your code when you had to configure these permissions? Regards, Yorick

  • Anonymous
    July 11, 2009
    Thanks so much for this - worked a treat. Excellent work!

  • Anonymous
    July 17, 2009
    This post keeps on giving.  We just created a new test environment and this was the missing piece to our puzzle.

  • Anonymous
    August 14, 2009
    Ahhh, thank you...  You have saved me many calls from a customer with exactly the same problem!!

  • Anonymous
    October 30, 2009
    The post just gave again.  Thanks so much.

  • Anonymous
    November 10, 2009
    This is just awesome. 3rd time worked for one on my customer..:)

  • Anonymous
    December 07, 2009
    Worked for me too after a sharepoint move to a new server farm. Thank you.

  • Anonymous
    December 23, 2009
    +1 on the above solution for a WFE that was recently upgraded from 2.0 to 3.0 using the in-place upgrade path.

  • Anonymous
    December 28, 2009
    I hope this can help me. Thank you for your post.

  • Anonymous
    March 03, 2010
    You are a godsend.  I have been trying to find out what was causing this error for over 3 months now.  I was doing it in my spare time and kept authenticating as admin so all the users could upload.  As soon as I changed the permissions on the bin file, users could upload with no issues. Thanks a ton. Kunal

  • Anonymous
    March 10, 2010
    Wish I'd found this post this morning! Cheers

  • Anonymous
    June 27, 2010
    Sir, Thanks for sharing your valuable information,,,you know this is why Microsoft rules the market,,,Thanks buddy Suresh Kumar V.C

  • Anonymous
    July 01, 2010
    Hi, I applied these Access Control on the bin folder, but still getting the same errors. Any advise please, Thank you, Suresh Kumar V.C

  • Anonymous
    August 04, 2010
    Dude - this nailed the issue that I was seeing when using SharePoint with Forms Authentication. (I thought that it was any number of other things causing it.) A million thanks.

  • Anonymous
    December 10, 2010
    Many thanks for such informative post.I am happy to knew about it. godwinsblog.cdtech.in/.../requested-page-cannot-be-accessed.html

  • Anonymous
    June 17, 2011
    Thanks a ton...it was bugging me since yday..your post rescued me :)

  • Anonymous
    July 23, 2011
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    June 24, 2012
    Worked like a charm, I had to download Process Monitor as filemon is not available anymore but it found the access denied problem on the bin directory.  Only problem is now I have Process Monitor I see there are a lot of other issues that need to be looked into. Thanks for the information, saving a bunch of time trying to find this by myself.

  • Anonymous
    October 15, 2012
    this had me foxed for a while, suddenly happened on just one page! This has done the trick for the moment. Thanks

  • Anonymous
    November 03, 2012
    This looks like a great thread. We are having the same issue for certain users accessing SP2010 team sites. Has anyone had the same issue. It only seems to effect certain users.

  • Anonymous
    May 10, 2013
    Unreal that access to an empty directory will fix this.

  • Anonymous
    August 29, 2013
    Thanks - this seems to have fixed my problem

  • Anonymous
    November 15, 2013
    Many thanks for this,  saved me a lot of time!!  Could not understand why this issue was occurring,  this solved it for me.  thanks!!

  • Anonymous
    November 25, 2013
    Many thanks. I have been pulling my hair out.

  • Anonymous
    May 23, 2015
    Thanks - after 3 weeks , this seems to have fixed my problem

  • Anonymous
    August 17, 2015
    Wow thanks after struggling with these 4 2days I found this great help