Error “The WebDAV server extension is either not installed or not configured properly” in SCCM 2007 on Windows Server 2008 R2

I came across a problem when I was installing SCCM 2007 on my Windows 2008 R2 server, where my Management Point was reporting this critical error: –

SMS Site Component Manager faild to install component SMS_MP_CONTROL_MANAGER on server myserver.

The WebDAV server extension is either not installed or not configured properly.
Solution: Make sure WebDAV is installed and enabled. Make sure there is an authoring rule that allow “All users” read access to “All content”. Make sure the WebDAV settings “Allow anonymous property queries” and “Allow property queries with infinite depth” are set to “true” and “Allow Custom Properties” is set to false.

Fair enough. I loaded the IIS management console, connected to the local server and opened the “WebDAV Authoring Rules” option. Here, I added a new authoring rule as the error message suggested, and altered the WebDAV settings to specify the advanced properties.

I had made another change that required a restart, so I restarted my server at this stage intending to re-test the management point when it restarted, however the error persisted. I re-checked the authoring rules and properties, and confirmed that they were correct, yet SCCM was still reporting this critical error.

I tracked down the configuration file for WebDAV under “C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\config\schema\WebDAV_schema.xml” and compared this to the properties I had set via the IIS management console – They didn’t match!

The following section doesn’t line up with what I specified via the IIS management console: –

<attribute name=”allowAnonymousPropfind” type=”bool” defaultValue=”false” />
<attribute name=”allowInfinitePropfindDepth” type=”bool” defaultValue=”false” />
<attribute name=”allowCustomProperties” type=”bool” defaultValue=”true” />

These values should be “true”, “true”, “false”.

I wasn’t able to make any changes to this file without first taking ownership, due to the default ACL’s, but after I did that, I modified the values and re-saved the file (and also reverted the permissions back to the default).

After a restart of the “World Wide Web Publishing Service” and the “SMS_SITE_COMPONENT_MANAGER” service, everything started working correctly.