HTTP Error 500.19 when trying to run site from Visual Studio 2012 Project Directory

Question

I suffered a hard drive failure and one of our IT guys copied one of my projects off of it for me. I copied it from his USB drive into my Visual Studio 2012 projects folder. After installing IIS7 and everything else, the project builds successfully and I want to run. I run this in IIS 7.5 instead of the built in web server in VS. Unfortunately, IIS is not happy about something. First I realized I needed to take ownership of the directory I copied over. I made sure to give the NETWORK SERVICE account read rights on it and I made sure the permissions permeated down to all child folders and files. Now, I am stumped. Can anyone suggest how to resolve?

HTTP Error 500.19 - Internal Server Error

The requested page cannot be accessed because the related configuration data for the page is invalid.

Config Error

Cannot read configuration file due to insufficient permissions 

Answer 1

On VisualStudio Solution explorer, right click on project, select "Properties", go to "Web" tab and hit "Create Virtual Directory". Solved for me on VS2013.

Answer 2

You have to convert your parent folder in to a Web Application.

Visit IIS:

Select Parent Folder, right click and select Convert to Application and hit OK.

This happen when IIS doesn't have permission to access that folder.

Answer 3

Swapping to the VS Development Server fixed it for me (vs2012).

1. Right click on project,
2. Select "Properties"
3. Select "Web" tab
4. Select "Use Visual Studio Development Server"
5. Run project again.

My settings were previously to "Use Local IIS Web Server" with IIS Express checked. Something was obviously out of sorts in IIS permissions. I didn't look as to why it wasn't working, but tbh I didn't really care...