Dashboard site is giving access denied, but not settings pages

Question

Environment: Windows Server 2008, Sharepoint (MOSS) 2007, Team Foundation Server 2010

Summary: I have a sharepoint environment that I had to move to a new domain controller without access to the old one. I recreated all of the service accounts and reset the credentials for the services startup, the app pools, the search service, and the databases themselves and analysis, and reporting services. I also added myself as a site collection administrator, and the owner of the web application and the administrator of the web application.

Scenario: I try to go to the dashboard at http://localhost:8080/vsts/DefaultCollection and it gives me an access denied error. However if I go to http://localhost:8080/vsts/DefaultCollection/_lyaouts/user.aspx it opens fine. This makes me think that it is not actually a permissions issue. I checked, and I am listed as the site collection administrator. I also added myself to the policy for the web app with full control. I have checked everywhere I could think of. If anyone have any ideas on what might be causing this I would be very grateful.

Answer 1

This is a very common problem when you migrate sites in sharepoint. The reason for this is

Look carefully into the following :-

1. Publishing/Approval Status of the master page.
2. Publishing/Approval of the page layout used in the landing page.
3. Publishing/Approval of the landing page.

Additionally, review all source code in the current master page and page layout. If it contains anything like urls , xml datasources , etc. that points to older locations or some location which is not accessible. SharePoint will show such errors at times.

The scope of the problem cannot be beyond the above points for sure.