You receive a "Cannot complete this action" error message when you connect to a portal site in SharePoint Portal Server 2003 (834546)

SYMPTOMS

When you connect to your Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 portal site, you may receive an error message that is similar to the following:

Cannot complete this action.

When you receive this error message, you must restart Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) before you can connect to the portal site.

CAUSE

This issue may occur if you do not have appropriate permissions to the Bin folder that contains the SharePoint Portal Server 2003 binary files. By default, the Bin folder is located in the following folder on the hard disk, where Drive is the drive where SharePoint Portal Server is installed:

Drive:\Program Files\SharePoint Portal Server

For example, this issue may occur if the NTFS file system permissions on the Bin folder are changed and you no longer have Read & Execute permissions to the folder. In this situation, you experience the symptom that is described in the "Symptoms" section of this article if you are the first user to connect to the portal site and if the IIS worker process (W3wp.exe) is initialized when you connect to the portal site.

RESOLUTION

To resolve this issue, make sure that the Drive:\Program Files\SharePoint Portal Server\Bin folder on the server is configured with the correct permissions. The following table lists the minimum permissions that must be set on theDrive:\Program Files\SharePoint Portal Server\Bin folder:

Group or User Account        Permission
----------------------------------------------
The Administrators group     Full Control
The Users group              Read & Execute
The Power Users group        Modify
SYSTEM                       Full Control
CREATOR OWNER                Full Control

MORE INFORMATION

For more information about how to configure and how to administer SharePoint Portal Server, see the Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Administration Guide. The Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Administration Guide (Administrator's Help.chm) is located in the Docs folder in the root of the SharePoint Portal Server 2003 CD-ROM.

For more information about SharePoint Portal Server, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

http://www.microsoft.com/office/sharepoint/prodinfo/default.mspx