WebDAV max file size and basic authentication

Enable basic Authentication

You may be unable to connect to a WebDAV share because of security constraints. More specifically, unable to use basic authentication to non-ssl shares. This is a very bad thing to do, as it implies sending the password in plain text over the network. Ergo it is disabled by default, but if you absolutely have to use it, this is how you enable it:

Change the value of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\WebClient\Parameters\BasicAuthLevel to 2.

The possible options are:

  • 0 – Basic authentication disabled
  • 1 – Basic authentication enabled for SSL shares only
  • 2 or greater – Basic authentication enabled for SSL shares and for non-SSL shares

Se http://support.microsoft.com/kb/841215 for details.

Change max file size

You may get the following error when downloading or uploading a large file from a WebDAV share: Error 0x800700DF The file size exceeds the limit allowed and cannot be saved.

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The default limit on Windows 7 is 50.000.000 bytes, or 47,68MiB if you will. That’s not very much if you are trying to download a 3GiB iso file or something like that. As the error message hints at, this is a configurable limit. It is defined in the following registry value:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\WebClient\Parameters\FileSizeLimitInBytes

Change it to a value suiting your needs. The maximum value is 4095MiB, or 0xFFFFFFFF.

You should also increase the  FileAttributesLimitInBytes setting a bit. This setting determines how big a directory listing is allowed to be in bytes, which translates to how many files and subfolders you are able to list on screen. If you have directories containing more than 1000 sub-items, the view could be truncated. I have added an extra 0 to the default value.

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Author: DizzyBadger

SQL Server DBA, Cluster expert, Principal Analyst

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