Here’s the scenario – I had just restored a new site collection, changing much of the design. All backups seemed to go well, and all meta-data and security was still in tact after the restoration. However, when testing, I was getting complaints that some/many of the contributors who showed to have had access were coming up with ‘Access Denied’ when going to most of the subsites.

After testing and checking security for a couple of days, along with googling my fingers off, I came upon an obscure page that asked the question ‘are any of the pages referenced by the Master Page not checked in?’.

I couldn’t believe it. I found that the actual Master Page I was using was still checked out. Once I checked it back in, there were no more ‘Access Denied’ messages!

Well, there you go. Your mileage may vary, but it’s definitely something in which to look.