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After a new installation of IIS role in a server, the browser may return “404 Page Not Found” error for your newly created website. This message can be misleading if the site exists and the URL is correct.

 

To troubleshoot this issue, check if the ASP.NET role is installed frist. It sounds simple but it is also easy to miss.

 

Go to Server Manager to check which features are installed under Web Server (IIS) role.

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If the required features are installed, follow the check list below to find out the issue:

  • Make sure the website and application pool are running
  • Create an HTML file in the application folder and browse it
  • Make sure World Wide Web Publishing service is running
  • Go to IIS logs and check if there is a sub-status code for the 404 error
  • Go to Request Filtering in IIS Manager to make sure there is no rule affecting ASP.NET pages
  • Check if the other websites hosted in IIS work
  • Create a new website and application pool to try accessing your ASP.NET pages
  • Check bindings. Check if the ports are listened
  • Go to Handler Mappings in IIS Manager to make sure ASPX has handlers
  • Gather information about the issue history. Was it working before or it hasn’t worked?
  • Make sure the existing files have aspx extension
  • In some servers, you may need to run aspnet_regiis -i in Command Prompt

Try to reset IIS after making changes to ensure changes go into effect right away.

Brought to you by Dr. Ware, Microsoft Office 365 Silver Partner, Charleston SC.