SharePoint 2010 Authentication Prompts in Document Library

SharePoint 2010 is an incredible product however, it is a beast. There are so many moving parts and nothing is really "simple." One of the things I recently ran across was a lot of authentication prompts and security warnings when users would open a document in a document library or save to a document library. This totally ruins the user experience. They're already leery of the application and if you make them authenticate all the time, they'll hate you. In addition, you don't want to use the "Remember Password" box because when their password changes, they'll be screwed.

I had a hard time finding a concise solution to solve this problem, so here is what I used and had the best success with:

1. Add your site to the Trusted Sites Internet Zone.
2. Go to Internet Options - Security - Highlight the Trusted Sites Check Mark - click on custom level - scroll to the bottom and in the user authentication section select "Automatic logon with current username and password."
3. This can be done via group policy by going to:  User Configuration - Policies - Administrative Templates - Windows Components - Internet Explorer - Internet Control Panel - Security Page - Trusted Sites Zone. From here find "Logon Options" and enable it. Pick the "Automatic logon with current username and password option."

This will get rid of most of the prompts however, there is one more change you need to make if you're getting prompts when users are saving a new document up to a document library:

1. The changes are in reference to this KB http://support.microsoft.com/kb/943280
2. You need to adjust the AuthForwardServerList to include your URL. You can use a * if you want. Make sure you use the full URL like https://*.domain.com
3. This can also be done via group policy by following this post: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepoint2010setup/thread/b26d9599-9a70-4f44-b19d-08b3a42669f2/
4. One thing to note from that link that the author does not tell you, you have to modify this GPO registry item so that it is set to CREATE since it is a NEW reg key:

SQL Server Maintenance Plan Execution Failed

Problem:
No matter what type of SQL Server Maintenance Plan you create and no matter what credentials you use, the plan always fails with "Execution Failed." There is almost no information to go on either. Event logs, SQL Agent logs....nothing is reporting a problem.

Are you using SQL aliases?

Solution:
Make sure you've set the alias for both the 32bit and 64bit drivers. We ran into this exact problem and as soon as we added the alias to the second section, all the maintenance plans ran fine.