Explorer View does not work on Windows Server 2003

When you try to access an Explorer View page on Windows Server 2003, you will receive the following error: "Explorer View requires Internet Explorer 5.0 or greater and Web Folders."

This is typically caused by the fact that Windows Server 2003 does not include Web Folders (FPRPC) technology and, by default, the Web Client Service is disabled.

You can resolve this in one of two ways:

1. Install Microsoft Office 2007 or FrontPage on the server. Office 2007 and FrontPage install Web Folders components which will then allow you to access the Explorer View using FPRPC.

2. Enable the Web Client Service on the server.

Explorer View causes users to be prompted for credentials

Users may or may not be required to use basic authentication when accessing the site initially, but they will always be prompted for credentials when attempting to use the Explorer View.

This behavior is usually the result of the Explorer View using FPRPC. The components that provide FPRPC use their own session of the Windows Internet (WININET) API, not the session in use by Internet Explorer itself. Therefore, session information that is not persisted, such as server cookies, is unavailable in FPRPC requests. This makes some servers require re-authentication or re-navigation to the URL for FPRPC-based connections to communicate with those servers. This behavior is documented in KB article 838028, "How documents are opened from a Web site in Office 2003.".

Drag-and-drop operations using Explorer View fail

When dropping folders in the Explorer View, the folder is created, but the files fail to copy and an error message is presented to the user.

This can be caused by insufficient permissions for the Temporary Internet Files folder for the BUILTIN\NetworkService account. This account must have read and write access to this folder to successfully complete a drag-and-drop operation.

Explorer View is very slow to render

After clicking the Explorer View link, the page changes to WebFldr.aspx and then the browser takes from 45 seconds to 5 minutes to render the Web Folder view.

There are a few causes and solutions for this:

· Ports 137, 138, 139 and 445 are blocked, and ICMP is not. See the section titled "Important Information for Troubleshooting Explorer View" to resolve this problem.

· The server is being accessed using a name other than its configured NetBIOS or Fully Qualified Domain Name. This occurs most often in load balancing and extranet scenarios. See the section titled "Important Information for Troubleshooting Explorer View" to resolve this problem.

· WebDAV is trying to use a proxy to access a server on the local network. See the section titled "Explorer View Causes Users to be Prompted For Credentials."

Long URLS do not work with FrontPage RPC

When you try to locate a Web folder or open a Web folder document that is stored in Microsoft SharePoint Server, you may receive the following error message:

"The Web folder address Internet Explorer was given is too long. Please use a shorter address."

This problem occurs even after you install the hotfix that is described in KB article 325355, "You cannot access Word documents by using Outlook Web Access on a server that is running SharePoint Portal Server." This problem is caused by a URL length limitation imposed on Internet Explorer. You can increase this limit by following the steps described in KB article 329919, "Cannot open a Web folder document that is located on a Microsoft Sharepoint Portal Server-based server."