Prompting for Credentials

Often people ask me a question why Windows keeps prompting to login when you open a document from SharePoint. To automatically login you can change the settings that I have written down in this blog post: SharePoint prompts to login multiple time when opening a document If you still have problems with windows that keeps prompting for credentials you should not stop the WebClient service like many blogs give as solution. Stopping this service is a resolution for this problem but not the correct solution. When you stop this service other problems can occur like:

• When you open a document from SharePoint and press “Save” the save dialog will not open with the document library but with a local folder.

But what is the resolution I hear you thinking! The resolution for vista is a registry key setting.

1. Go to start – run, and type regedit.
2. When the registry editor window opens go to this path:
   • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE – SYSTEM – CurrentControlSet – Services – WebClient – Parameters.
3. Right-click the ‘Parameters’ subkey and create a new Multi-String Value.
4. Give the Multi-String Value the name ‘AuthForwardServerList’.
5. Open the new value and type in the list of SharePoint server URL’s that are trusted and click ‘Ok’
6. Close the registry editor.
7. Reboot your PC or restart the WebClient Service : start – Administrative Tools - Services

The steps I have written down should work on a PC with Windows Vista SP1. If you guys have found another solution please let me know by placing a comment.