Popup for network username and password (html emails only)

[RHARRIS]

Hi,

We have Outlook 2003 running via an exchange server. Our Intranet runs on a
windows webserver with IIS, that has Windows authentication enabled. On our
Intranet I have enabled "Domain Users" permissions for the webserver so
everyone at our company has access to it.

Now I created a html page and am using as a template to send html emails to
our company users. The source code is below where I am having a problem:



<img src='http://intranet/Gorf/Frog8.jpg' width='200'
height='200'>
<div align='center' class='style3'>This weeks tip </div>



As you can see, the html email makes use of an image stored on our Intranet.
If this html email gets sent to a user, they cant view the image as it pops
up with a dialog box asking for their network username and password
credentials. I have no idea why its doing this as I have:

1. Enabled windows authentication on the webserver (it works as I can see
users connected to our Intranet)
2. Given domain users full access to the "Gorf" folder in the folders
permissions of our Intranet.

According to our Network Administrator, all has been done correctly and
theoretically it should be working, but it still keeps popping up with this
error. Its only happening in Outlook. If users try to navigate to that image
in their Internet Explorer, they can see it with no problem and it does not
ask for username and password.

So this is only an Outlook issue. Please can someone tell me how to fix this
& why this is happening?

Cheers

 

[RHARRIS]

Seriously? No one has any idea?

 

[spiraino]

Some of my users are having the exact same problem in Outlook, but not all of
them. Reseting their profiles works for awhile, but then the problem comes
back. One user created an HTML signature with a link to an image on our
Intranet in it, and everytime she adds that signature block to an e-mail she
has to authenticate. Checking "Remember Password" only works until she closes
and restarts Outlook. But if she goes to that link directly in IE, it works
just fine. Somehow, Outlook has stopped using the user's credentials when she
acceses that IMG SRC.

Please Help.

 

[spiraino]

I have gathered some new information on the problem. I got one of the user's
experiencing it to save the e-mail as a .msg and send it to me as an
attachment. When I open the attached e-mail, it prompts me for authenticatio
to get the HTML image. It is being allowed because this server is in our
Intranet, and we allow downloaded images from the Intranet and Trusted Sites
zones.

With the authentication pop-up, I was able to track down which server was
requesting credentials and review the IIS logs. When I try to open the email,
the following log entry is recorded (note that I have masked IP addresses):

2009-06-09 17:38:43 W3SVC2 edcwfp04 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx GET
/PubAff/images/Signature_Logo.gif - 80 - xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx HTTP/1.1 Mozilla/4.0+

When I copy the link source from the e-mail and go to the image directly via
Internet Explorer, I get this log entry(I've masked the IP, Domain, and
username):

2009-06-09 17:48:26 W3SVC2 edcwfp04 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx GET
/PubAff/images/Signature_Logo.gif - 80 DOMAIN\username xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
HTTP/1.1 Mozilla/4.0+

Clearly, IE is sending my credentials, and Outlook 2003 is not. But it
doesn't do this to every single email with referenced pictures. Could there
be something special about this site?

One further note, after the user enters their credentials to see the image,
it seems to mess up alot of the single sign on within the office suite, and
sometimes even in IE. She has gotten authentication pop-ups sometimes when
she tries to go to the Internet through our ISA proxy. She claims that all of
this started after she got this email.

 

[Ryan]

I have the EXACT same problem. That's good information you found in the
logs. Have you been able to figure anything else out about this? I have
found this KB article http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/824067,
but it didn't help and it seemed a little outdated anyways. This just
started happening to our users here as well, and some get it, some don't.
Also, I am using Windows 7 with IE 8 and Office 2007, and it doesn't do it
for me on that machine. If I log on to one of our standard desktops with
Office 2003 and IE6, then it does.

Any more info would be SO appreciated. Thanks!

 

[Ryan]

ok, well, what I did to work around this was on the webservers, I drilled
down to that particular gif file and made that file anonymous access.
Problem solved!