WSS 3.0 Site Search Not Working

Background

We are running Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 as both an intranet and a document library for a reasonably small (less than 1000 seats) user base. We use a two-server set up with one for the front-end and another for the databases.

For various reasons, we transferred the web front-end to a new server. The transfer was successful, but the search functionality no longer worked.

The Error

Access is denied. Check that the Default Content Access Account has access to this content, or add a crawl rule to crawl this content.   (0×80041205)

The Fix

Many thanks to Sven Gillis’ post here: http://svengillis.blogspot.com/2008/10/access-denied-when-crawling-moss.html

The solution was to disable the loopback check on the servers hosting SharePoint. Adding the hostnames served to the BackConnectionHostNames list in the registry on the SharePoint servers wasn’t enough, the loopback check had to be completely disabled.

Disable the loopback check

Follow these steps:

1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
2. In Registry Editor, locate and then click the following registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa
3. Right-click Lsa, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
4. Type DisableLoopbackCheck, and then press ENTER.
5. Right-click DisableLoopbackCheck, and then click Modify.
6. n the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.
7. Quit Registry Editor, and then restart your computer.

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