Category: IIS

How to disable anonymous authentication in IIS Express

StackOverflow: IIS Express is automatically disabling anonymous authentication for my project, why?

To disable anonymous authentication in IIS Express, I found updating the following element in the project files (i.e. csproj, vbproj) allowed me to debug my application with anonymous access.

Changing the IISExpressAnonymousAuthentication setting to enabled fixes the issue (it can also be done within Visual Studio, select project, F4, set Anonymous Authentication in the properties grid to Enabled).

<IISExpressAnonymousAuthentication>disabled</IISExpressAnonymousAuthentication>

“HTTP Error 404 – File or Directory not found” error message when you request dynamic content with IIS 6.0

I ran across this problem with an ASP page and found a solution on the Microsoft Support site.

Symptoms:
Active Server Pages (ASP) page, ASP.NET page, Internet Services API (ISAPI) application, or Common Gateway Interface (CGI) application on a Windows Server 2003 server running Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0, give the following error messages:

  1. HTTP Error 404 – File Not Found
  2. HTTP Error 404 – File or Directory not found

Cause:
IIS 6.0 was set to serve only static HTML pages by default on Windows Server 2003

Solution:
Using the IIS manager Allow Active Server Pages under the Web service extensions node.

Redirecting Browser Requests to Another Folder or Web Site

To redirect browser requests to another folder or Web site:

  1. Start IIS Manager.
  2. Click to expand * server name, where server name is the name of the server.
  3. Right-click either the Web site or the folder that you want to redirect, and then click Properties.
  4. Click one of the following tabs that is appropriate to your situation:
    • Home Directory
    • Virtual Directory
    • Directory
  5. Under When connecting to this resource, the content should come from, click A redirection to a URL.
  6. Type the URL of the destination folder or Web site in the Redirect to box.
  7. And that’s it.