I've got a MOSS site that I am trying to configure using Forms authentication and absolutely any kind of membership provider whatsoever.

Thus far ActiveDirectory has proved obstructively difficult so I've just whipped up a simple stub membership provider and put it in the GAC. It's a very basic and simple provider but it works fine with an ASP.Net site, I just can't make it work with Sharepoint.

On Sharepoint I get the following error when I look for StubProvider:Bob ( or anything else for that matter) from the "Policy For Web Application" people picker:

Error in searching user 'StubProvider:bob' : System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception: Unable to contact the global catalog server
 at Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities.SPActiveDirectoryDomain.GetDirectorySearcher()     at Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls.PeopleEditor.SearchFromGC(SPActiveDirectoryDomain domain, String strFilter, String[] rgstrProp, Int32 nTimeout, Int32 nSizeLimit, SPUserCollection spUsers, ArrayList& rgResults)
 at Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities.SPUserUtility.SearchAgainstAD(String input, SPActiveDirectoryDomain domainController, SPPrincipalType scopes, SPUserCollection usersContainer, Int32 maxCount, String customQuery, TimeSpan searchTimeout, Boolean& reachMaxCount)
 at Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities.SPActiveDirectoryPrincipalResolver.SearchPrincipals(String input, SPPrincipalType scopes, SPPrincipalSource sources, SPUserCollection usersContainer, Int32 maxCount, Boolean& reachMaxCount)
 at Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities.SPUtility.SearchPrincipalFromResolvers(List`1 resolvers, String input, SPPrincipalType scopes, SPPrincipalSource sources, SPUserCollection usersContainer, Int32 maxCount, Boolean& reachMaxCount, Dictionary`2 usersDict).

The Provider is named as Authentication Provider for the Site Collection in question. As far as I can tell this is because Sharepoint is still trying to access ActiveDirectory rather than talking to the provider I'm asking it to use.

My Sharepoint Central Administration section includes this:

 <membership>
   <providers>
     <add  name="StubProvider"
   type="StubMembershipProvider.Provider, StubMembershipProvider, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=5bd7e2498c3e1a03" />
   </providers>
 </membership>

And also:

   <PeoplePickerWildcards>
     <clear />
     <add key="StubProvider" value="%" />
   </PeoplePickerWildcards>

Is there a clear reason why this would not be accessible from the PeoplePicker or why it is still trying to use ActiveDirectory? I've made sure I reset IIS and even restarted the server to see if either of those helped but they made no difference.