UNC access to TFS SharePoint doesn’t work

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We are using TFS2010 with the SharePoint document portal. We are trying to access the files in SharePoint using UNC paths (e.g. \\tfs2010\sites\DefaultCollection\MyProject) and it just plain doesn't work.

From my workstation, I actually get different behaviours depending on the path.

Case 1: Path = \\tfs2010\sites\DefaultCollection\MyProject\
Result: windows explorer reports a network error "Windows cannot access \\tfs2010\sites\DefaultCollection\MyProject\"

Case 2: Path = \\tfs2010.mycompany.com\sites\DefaultCollection\MyProject\
Result: Windows Security dialog pops up asking for my username and password. I tried entering all combinations of my windows username and password (with and without the domain before the username), but no matter what, my credentials are not accepted.

I have no problems accessing the SharePoint site through the web portal – it's just UNC which doesn't work.

There doesn't seem to be anything relevant in the event viewer on the server.

Anyone have any idea what could be the problem?

Best Answer

  • I assume you're on the same domain as server and are properly entering your logon when UNC prompts (either domain\user or user@domain.com).
  • What OS is your workstation? I believe UNC access requires the WebDav Client service be running, and it's not running by default on all Server OS's.
  • Is tfs2010 the actual server name or an alias? If it's not the actual servername, you may be having Kerberos issues with authentication.
  • ULSViewer is your friend. Run it on SharePoint server, point it to logs default location and watch it while you try to UNC to SharePoint. 90% of time I can discover the problem with USLViewer.
  • Try going in a standard (non-TFS) SharePoint document library and click the "open in explorer" button. Does that work?
  • Bonus tip: The reason \tfs2010 doesn't prompt for login and the FQDN does, is that it's using Internet Explorer security zones, and assumes anything with a FQDN is not trusted for passthrough authentication. To fix this, add tfs2010.mycompany.com to the "Intranet" zone.
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