Accessing Site Contents Causes 401 Error

Question

I have 1 Site Collection that suddenly stopped serving all the pages in the "_layouts" folder; all pages return 401 error.

• It is the root Site Collection for the Web Application (https://MyDomain.com).
• I am the Primary site collection administrator for all Site Collections.
• The Welcome page is fine.
• I can see Lists but the "Items" and "Lists" Ribbions never finish loading.
• The other Site Collections are fine.

Any ideas on how to fix this?

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Update

F12 Debuger of List Ribbon

• When I debug the List Ribbon, I got an error in "ScriptResource.axd" in Sys.Serialization.JavaScriptSerializer.deserialize = function Sys$Serialization$JavaScriptSerializer$deserialize(data, secure) {

• The variable [data] is normally a JSON array, however, it is the text

  "401 UNAUTHORIZED"

From ULS I found this

Unexpected Exception in SPDistributedCachePointerWrapper::InitializeDataCacheFactory for usage 'DistributedLogonTokenCache' - Exception 'Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Caching.DataCacheException: ErrorCode:SubStatus:There is a temporary failure. Please retry later. (One or more specified cache servers are unavailable, which could be caused by busy network or servers. For on-premises cache clusters, also verify the following conditions. Ensure that security permission has been granted for this client account, and check that the AppFabric Caching Service is allowed through the firewall on all cache hosts. Also the MaxBufferSize on the server must be greater than or equal to the serialized object size sent from the client.). Additional Information : The client was trying to communicate with the server : net.tcp://MyServer:22233
at Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Caching.DataCache.ThrowException(ResponseBody respBody, RequestBody reqBody)
at Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Caching.DataCacheFactory.GetCacheProperties(RequestBody request, IClientChannel channel)
at Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Caching.DataCacheFactory.GetCache(String cacheName)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.DistributedCaching.SPDistributedCachePointerWrapper.InitializeDataCacheFactory()'.

Answer 1

I didn't find away to fix the error, directly; I had to recreate the Web Application.

1. Go to Central Administration
2. [Application Management] -> [Manage content databases]
3. Select the bad Web Application
4. Save the names and locations of the content databases
5. [Remove content database] for each content database
6. [Application Management] -> [Manage web applications]
7. Select the Web Application
8. [Delete] -> [Delete Web Application]
9. [Delete content database] = Yes
10. [Delete IIS websites] = Yes
11. Click [Delete]
12. [Application Management] -> [Manage web applications]
13. Click [New]
14. Don't make a new Site Collection. Other than that, it's up to you, to recreate the Web Application, the way that is correct for your environment
15. [Application Management] -> [Manage content databases]
16. Select the new Web Application
17. Delete the new Content Database; if one exists
18. Attach the Content Databases from step 5

Answer 2

Might be worth checking the ULS log to see if there are any clues as to what is the cause.

Answer 3

Issues with logon tokens in SharePoint can typically be resolved by restarting IIS, although this will not permanently resolve the issue. Permanent resolution could be acheived by reviewing configuration in IIS.