Question

I’m trying to use IIS Express with VS2010 to host a silverlight application. I modified my applicationhost.config file to allow for modification of the proper configuration settings. I have the following in my web.config:

<location path="">
  <system.webServer>
    <security>
      <authentication>
        <anonymousAuthentication enabled="false" />
        <windowsAuthentication enabled="true" />
      </authentication>
    </security>
  </system.webServer>
</location>

I am not being authenticated and my domain service call returns a null record as the user. I was able to get this to work after installing VS2010 SP1 BETA but I’m trying to get this to work with only IIS Express.

How do I enable Windows Authentication to work with IIS Express. Is there a configuration setting that I am missing?

Answer 1

option-1:

edit \My Documents\IISExpress\config\applicationhost.config file and enable windowsAuthentication, i.e:

<system.webServer>
...
  <security>
...
    <authentication>
      <windowsAuthentication enabled="true" />
    </authentication>
...
  </security>
...
</system.webServer>

option-2:

Unlock windowsAuthentication section in \My Documents\IISExpress\config\applicationhost.config as follows

<add name="WindowsAuthenticationModule" lockItem="false" />

Alter override settings for the required authentication types to ‘Allow’

<sectionGroup name="security">
    ...
    <sectionGroup name="system.webServer">
        ...
        <sectionGroup name="authentication">
            <section name="anonymousAuthentication" overrideModeDefault="Allow" />
            ...
            <section name="windowsAuthentication" overrideModeDefault="Allow" />
    </sectionGroup>
</sectionGroup>

Add following in the application’s web.config

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration>
    <system.webServer>
      <security>
        <authentication>
          <windowsAuthentication enabled="true" />
        </authentication>
      </security>
    </system.webServer>
</configuration>

Below link may help:
http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/376/delegating-configuration-to-webconfig-files/

After installing VS 2010 SP1 applying option 1 + 2 may be required to get windows authentication working. In addition, you may need to set anonymous authentication to false in IIS Express applicationhost.config:

<authentication>

            <anonymousAuthentication enabled="false" userName="" />

for VS2015, the IIS Express applicationhost config file may be located here:

$(solutionDir)\.vs\config\applicationhost.config

and the <UseGlobalApplicationHostFile> option in the project file selects the default or solution-specific config file.