Monday, September 2, 2013

401 Unauthorized errors on SharePoint 2013

In my SharePoint 2013 development environment I found a new issue which was not happened in past, I suddenly ran into 401 unauthorized errors.
Those errors would occur only when the pages would be rendered through the /_layouts/15/start.aspx page. This specific page is responsible for loading pages from a site using the Minimal Download Strategy feature, a new feature in SharePoint 2013 that improves client rendering performance and fluidity for navigating from one page to another page by downloading only the changes between two pages.

Error:
401 unauthorized

Solution:
If you are experiencing those 401 unauthorized errors, simply disable the following feature for now.
Site Settings > Manage Site Features > Minimal Download Strategy (see the image below)




Happy SharePointing...!!!

29 comments:

  1. Very helpful, I was starting to panic. This fixed my issues.

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    Replies
    1. Thank you very much.

      But which features aren't available anymore if I deactivate this?

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  2. WOW, THANKS! it did the trick...

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  3. Where would site settings be located? Within Sharepoint or within your browser's preferences (on a Mac)? Thanks!

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  4. Sorry Amy for late reply.

    Site Settings is located in your SharePoint 2013 Site's Site Action menu in top bar.

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  5. I'm not using the minumn download Strategy still not working

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  6. Hard to disable when you can't login...

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  7. Check that you have your Alternate Access mappings setup correctly for the webapp.

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  8. Wow. Thanks a lot. U've killed my headache.

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  9. Thanks a lot.It worked fine.

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  10. How do you disable if you can't get into the site? How should Alternate Access mappings be setup? Thanks!

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  11. Big thanks, I was stuck a day until I found your tip!

    (One might think that the brains in Seattle should test such a feature AND/OR not setting it as default AND give a clue in warning messages )

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  12. Turn off the feature? No that is not an option. It is a great performance enhancement that comes along with SharePoint 2013 so it should NOT be turned off! Keep it enabled and found out the real source of your problems instead.

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  13. Dimitris DaskalakisMay 19, 2014 at 4:38 PM

    It seems, that this: http://sandbox2010.kwizcom.com/sites/demo-data-view-plus/admin-corner-blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=4
    is the proper configuration to avoid 401 Unauthorized Errors

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  14. Thanks for you trick!!

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  15. A life saver trick. I'm glad that I only wasted 3 hours before finding this trick. It could take days.

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  16. for Mr anonymous 11th of april 2014, you can go to the following url http://yoursite/_layouts/15/ManageFeatures.aspx

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  17. I haven't activated minimum download strategy.Iam able to access the central administrator page but not my webapplication!

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  18. Thanks a lot...It helped me but I am wondering whether this Minimal download feature is useless and can not be used ...

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  19. Your blog has given me that thing which I never expect to get from all over the websites. Nice post guys!

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  20. So Very helpful. I didn't realize that I had this featured turned on and my later on I started getting that error.

    Thank you so much for pointing it out! This solved my problem.

    Cheers!

    Aftab S
    theItvideos.com

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  21. Thanks everyone for reading my this article and replied back with good comments.

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  22. when i access sharepoint 401 unauthorized and not able to login central administration; how to resolve

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