Question

I tried to deploy an ASP.NET application in IIS6. I created a virtual directory MyApp, mapped it to a folder on the hard drive, copied all the stuff from my application to that folder.

Now when I request http://host/MyApp/ I get HTTP 403 and that request is logged in the IIS log. When I request http://host/MyApp/default.aspc (there’s no such file) I get HTTP 404 and that request is also logged.

But when I request http://host/MyApp/default.aspx (that file is present in the folder which the virtual directory is mapped to) Internet Explorer just says it “cannot display the web page”, that request is not logged. When I trace requests with Fiddler it shows empty reply and HTTP code 0 on the client side. .aspx extension is of course mapped onto ASP.NET ISAPI extension.

ASP.NET 2.0 is installed into IIS. When I run aspnet_regiis -lk it produces the following output:

W3SVC/  2.0.50727.0
W3SVC/1/ROOT/   2.0.50727.0
W3SVC/2/Root/   2.0.50727.0 

What’s wrong? Why does IIS6 behave so strangely when I request files mapped to ASP.NET ISAPI and how do I resolve this?

Answer 1

This particular oddity is normally caused by ASP.NET not being enabled under “Web Service Extensions”

Steps:

1. Control Panel > Administrative Tools > IIS Manager
2. Expand the machine node in the tree
3. Click on “Web Service Extensions”
4. Right-click on the appropriate ASP.NET version in the list to the right and choose “Allow”

Hopefully this is the issue you’re having!