This post is mostly a note to self, but hopefully it can save a little time for someone. I was just cranking up a new VPC to demo some document management features for a customer. Browsing the SharePoint webs worked like a charm, creating document libraries was no problem. But when I tried to save a document from word 2007 to a document library I got an annoying: ”This file cannot be saved to this location because there is no connection to the server. Check your network connection and try again.”

Also, the document panel failed to load.

I guess is that WebDAV or FrontPage RPC does not work connections the same way http does. I had no clue what this was so I spent a little time with my favorite search engine (live.com of course ;)).

Here is what made the error go away: net stop sens.

Apparently the System Event Notification Service (SENS) can be used by applications to determine bandwidth and such. And the office client uses it in some way. I have never encountered this problem in a production environment and even if I did, I don’t think turning off the service is the right solution. But in the case of a demo/development VPC, it’s fine in my book.