MED-V 1.0: Issue with Long URLs

Here’s an issue I have seen firsthand at least once or twice in testing and with one particular customer scenario. A user may encounter problems spawning alternative browsers when long URLs (i.e. URLs greater then 254 characters) are being intercepted by the MED-V BHO (browser helper object) when using web redirection.

For example, if you are redirecting URLs going to the domain name contoso.com to the guest browser and you type URLs that may be long such as the following:

http://sharepoint.contoso.com/directory1/directory2/directory3/directory4/directory5/directory6/directory7/directory8/directory9/directory10/directory11/directory12/directory13/directory14/directory15/directory16/directory17/directory18/directory19/directory20/

you may find that the guest browser does not spawn when typing or pasting the URL in the “Run” dialog box, the host browser, or the Windows Explorer address bar. The guest browser may not spawn if you simply click on a link on a web page in the host browser.

Another example may be a URL containing a local address and you are redirecting all local addresses:

http://sharepoint/Shared%20Documents/Forms/AllItems.aspx?RootFolder=%2fShared%20Documents%2fFolder1%2fFolder2%2ffolder%2dlength1234567890123456789012345678901234567890%2ffolder%2dlength%2d12345678901234567890&FolderCTID=&View=%7b465EA817%2dFF5A%2d4E66%2d8C91%2d160D0B0B53AC%7d
This is due to MED-V v1 spawning the instance of the browser with the URL as a command-line argument. This manner is causing the limitation of chracters in the argument to be reached.

Microsoft has confirmed this to be an issue in version 1.0 SP1 of MED-V and will be fixed in the next release of MED-V.

In the meantime, the recommended workaround is to open the guest browser instance in advance of activating the URL. This prevents the browser process from having to be spawned.