SharePoint 2010–You get “Your client does not support opening this list windows explorer” message when trying to open a list in explorer view

Problem

In this scenario users will receive the following error while trying to open a list in explorer view

Note – Customer was browsing this site on port 80(Not FQDN) and had Office 2010 installed on his client machines

Protocols used

Here is feature compression for WebDAV and FPRC, use of these protocols depends on how you are accessing the web application. For example FPRC is used when browsing a site on port other then 80

Observation

In this particular incident client did have Office client installed which is good enough to open the list in explorer view, so in order to troubleshoot this we captured a client side network trace through Netmon

This what we noticed in the Netmon trace

467        3:00:34 AM 7/4/2012        16.1702488                10.10.1.1        10.10.1.2        WEBDAV        WEBDAV:Request, PROPFIND /Contoso%20Customers , Using NLMP Authentication        {HTTP:54, TCP:53, IPv4:14}

468        3:00:34 AM 7/4/2012        16.1732154                10.10.1.2        10.10.1.1        WEBDAV        WEBDAV:Response, HTTP/1.1, Status: Method not allowed, URL: /Contoso%20customers         {HTTP:54, TCP:53, IPv4:14}

So what it appeared from the trace was that Client is trying to connect using WebDAV but for some reason IIS server was not allowing it.

Note – IIS is saying Method not allowed, which means IIS is blocking it.

Solution

This issue was caused because of the WebDAV module being installed on the server. SharePoint explorer view breaks if we use WEBDAV module, it also breaks if you use URL Scanner.

Question - How do I remove WebDAV module from IIS Server?

Answer -   This is how you can remove WebDAV module from IIS

1)  Open Server Manager

2) Expand Roles, click on Web Server(IIS)

3) Click on Remove Role Services

4) UnCheck WebDAV Publishing

5) Click Next

6) Click Remove

Question - I cannot remove WebDAV module as my non-SharePoint sites use this module

Answer – In that case we can remove WebDAV modules from just SharePoint site instead of removing it from the IIS

1) Open IIS

2) Expand Sites

3) Select the SharePoint Web Application

4) Select Modules from the Features View

5) Select WebDAVModule from the list of Native Modules and click on Remove

Reference -   Microsoft has published a nice White Paper on how to troubleshoot the Explorer View

Whitepaper - Understanding and Troubleshooting the SharePoint Explorer View

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=9981