IIS 6 not displaying default document (default.aspx)

Question

We have a problem in that IIS is no longer serving finding the default document (default.aspx) on a server which has previously been working OK. We have not consciously changed the configuration of the machine.

The symptoms are that if you go to the root of an application on the machine, it displays an asp.net 404 not found page with the following text:

The resource cannot be found.

Description: HTTP 404. [etc...]

Requested URL: /folder/eurl.axd/dd4414e526108f45a561b782d54f3ba2/

I don't know what eurl.axd is, but it seems to refer to extensionless URL support for ASP.NET 4.0, but the sites in question are all ASP.NET 2.0 sites.

Default.aspx is definitely set as the default the document (and is at the top of the list) for the site.

If I manually type in /folder/default.aspx the site then works fine, so it's not a problem serving the page, but merely a problem with IIS not defaulting to that page on it's own.

Any ideas how to fix this would be appreciated as this affects a live server :(

Answer 1

OK I've resolved this now. It seems it is indeed because of the extensionless URL support feature of ASP.NET 4.0. Despite the fact my sites are running .NET 2.0 sites it still seems to affect them as well (possibly because the URL filtering happens higher up?). I disabled extensionless URL support (see link) and now it's finding default.aspx pages OK.

For for more info, check this article: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/tmarq/archive/2010/06/18/how-to-disable-the-asp-net-v4-0-extensionless-url-feature-on-iis-6-0.aspx