At some point SharePoint 3.0 stopped indexing sites. That point must have been when updates were applied to the server, including one for .NET 3.5 SP1. At that point some vulnerability was patched, enabling this loop back check. The search service could no longer see the sites. Once the above entry was added the sites were suddenly available again without rebooting.
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.The Solution:
Disable the loopback check
- Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
- In Registry Editor, locate and then click the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa - Right-click Lsa, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
- Type DisableLoopbackCheck, and then press ENTER.
- Right-click DisableLoopbackCheck, and then click Modify.
- In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.
- Quit Registry Editor, and then restart your computer.
Misc Troubleshooting
- Check the logs: C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\LOGS
- Check the database (
server/WSS_Search ):select DisplayURl, l.ErrorDesc, el.ErrorMsg, LastTouchStart, HostID, StartAddressID from MSSCrawlUrlLog l
left outer join MSSCrawlErrorList el on l.ErrorID = el.ErrorID order by LastTouchStart
