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In Visual Studio my project builds and runs with no problem. When deploying to Windows Server 2012 R2 I encounter the following error:

A default document is not configured for the requested URL, and directory browsing is not enabled on the server.

I have installed all 4.5 and other Roles and Profiles, have given permission to the folder to everyone and have read every article and tried to implement every suggestion to no avail..

I'm out of options, spent weeks on this and cannot understand how this is so convoluted just to deploy a site.. Can someone advise? Thanks

Edit - this is for Windows Server 2012 and I have tried suggested alternatives such as adding runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests to my web.config.

Edit When deploying I build the solution in Release mode and copy the bin, views, content and scripts folders over to Windows Server. In IIS I then make the folder an application, making sure a 4.0 App Pool is assigned and still receive the error.

Final Edit Publish allowed me to see the structure that needed to be copied over. There were also 3 dll's that needed to be copied local from Visual Studio:

  • System.Web.Http.dll
  • System.Web.Http.WebHost.dll
  • System.Net.Http.Formatting.dll

As well as Web.Config dependentAssembly updated to take into account some MVC4 dll's such as Unity.Mvc4 pointing to MVC3 binaries.

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  • Often I find that the Default Document thing is a red herring. Go into your application pool settings in IIS for the application and change the .NET framework version to 4.** - it's often just set to use an older version of the framework, hence the problems. Commented Jun 15, 2015 at 22:13
  • possible duplicate of ASP.NET 4.5 MVC 4 not working on Windows Server 2008 IIS 7 Commented Jun 15, 2015 at 22:13
  • this is no duplicate. The above is for WS 2008 and I tried to add the runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests but it did not help. In the App Pool I also already ensured the .NET version is set to 4... Commented Jun 15, 2015 at 22:20
  • 2
    Have you installed ASP.Net in IIS using aspnet_regiis -i from command prompt ? Commented Jun 18, 2015 at 11:20
  • 1
    make sure mvc binaries are set to CopyLocal = true Commented Jun 19, 2015 at 3:35

3 Answers 3

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This error message gives a clue as to the problem. MVC sites do not rely on documents or web pages in the way that WebForms do, the default mode for IIS. They depend on a special handler that deals with the RESTful urls used to pass requests to your application.

In your web.config file, check that the following config is present in the system.webServer section:

<system.webServer>
  <handlers>
    <remove name="ExtensionlessUrlHandler-Integrated-4.0" />
    <remove name="OPTIONSVerbHandler" />
    <remove name="TRACEVerbHandler" />
    <add name="ExtensionlessUrlHandler-Integrated-4.0" path="*." verb="*" type="System.Web.Handlers.TransferRequestHandler" preCondition="integratedMode,runtimeVersionv4.0" />
  </handlers>   
</system.webServer>

Then on your web server, open the IIS Manager, navigate in the Connections panel on the LHS to the node that represents your application, then double-click on the Handler Mappings icon in the Features View tab. Check that the ExtensionlessUrlHandler-Integrated-4.0 handler is enabled (see below).

ExtensionlessUrlHandler

If that doesn't do the trick, double-check that you have the ASP.NET 4.5 Role enabled on the server. See http://www.iis.net/learn/get-started/whats-new-in-iis-8/iis-80-using-aspnet-35-and-aspnet-45#TOC301258515 for instructions.

Also make sure you application is running under an AppPool that is configured for .NET 4.0.

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+150

I recommend you to use Publish Tool in Visual Studio by right clicking on project in solution explorer to deploy resultant files on the web. Then try the followings:

  1. Reinstall .Net framework and MVC using Web PI.
  2. Put a dummy default.aspx file in the root folder (this will not be used when MVC is working, but can get rid of this problem).
  3. Try running the aspnet_regiis -i command in the Visual Studio 64 bit command prompt (with admin privileges), then deploy it.
  4. Take a look at Default Document configuration in IIS.

I wish to be solved.

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default document was required and also I had to copy local 3 of my dll's and update web.config to ensure that the depenentAssembly's were mapped to the correct dll versions. Publish allowed me to see the structure that I needed for deploying the project. Even with a fresh project on a fresh VS 2012 R2 server I still would see an issue with WebGrease.
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Seems like IIS has not considered your application as a web application. It must be a MVC version mismatch.

As it is tagged as MVC4, we have 3 inner versions in MVC4. Check the server for which version of MVC is installed.If it is not installed or if you dont want to install MVC in the server, set CopyLocal=true for all the assemblies that you have referred in your project and re-publish the application and deploy in the server.

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