I recently encountered a new SBS 2003 install where the Remote Web Workplace was showing a 403 Forbidden error instead of the RWW Login Screen. All other web services seemed to be working just fine: Companyweb, Monitoring, etc. Just the Remote Web Workplace was failing when bringing up the site. It was as if the site was bypassing the login screen and instead just failing the authentication.
It was a pretty good dig through support articles and groups looking for a possible cause to the problem. Finally I found the solution. In IIS, under the Default Website, there is the directory for RWW called “Remote”. On the Properties Sheet under Directory, there was no Default.aspx in the list of files to use as the Default. Adding Default.aspx to the list and scooting it up to the top did the trick.
Somehow, this was not being configured during the install. Before finding this solution, I even tried removing and reinstalling the Intranet on the SBS, but it was not configuring the website properly in IIS.
If you have a strange problem like this, I hope this helps!
