Getting 404 error on MVC web-site

Question

I have an IIS7.5 web-site, on Windows Server 2008, with an ASP.NET MVC2 web-site deployed to it. The website was built in Visual Studio 2008, targeting .NET 3.5, and IIS 5.1

Answer 1

Typically I encounter this issue when there is a Routing problem. I compare a working vs non-working to resolve it.

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Today however I accidentially created a Virtual Directory in IIS.

It has to be an Application, right click on the Virtual Directory (with a folder icon) -> Convert to Application:

Answer 2

If none of the other solutions here solved your issue, check that you have the

Global.asax

file in your website. This solved the issue for me.

Answer 3

We finally nailed this issue by exporting the IIS configuration of a working server, and comparing it to ours.

It was a really obscure setting which had been changed from the default.

IIS ROOT → request Filtering → Filename Extensions Tab → Edit Feature Settings → Allow unlisted file name extensions

This should be ticked.

This can be set at the IIS level, or the site-level.

Answer 4

In addition to checking if you're running in integrated pipeline mode, make sure your application pool is set to use .NET! I recently ran into this problem, and when I went in to check the app pool settings, I found that somehow it had been set to "No Managed Code." Whoops!

Answer 5

This is quite often caused by the following missing from the web.config:

<system.webServer>
   <modules runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true"/> 

Answer 6

Don't use runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests. You want to let IIS handle resources such as images.

<system.webServer> <!-- Rather do NOT use this -->
  <modules runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true"/>
</system.webServer>

Instead add the MVC routing module

<system.webServer>
  <modules>
    <remove name="UrlRoutingModule-4.0" />
    <add name="UrlRoutingModule-4.0" type="System.Web.Routing.UrlRoutingModule" preCondition="" />
  </modules>
</system.webServer>