MVC 5 on Windows Server 2008/IIS 7 Christian Donner, December 27, 2013September 17, 2015 I have been working on a small Website built with Visual Studio 2013, .Net 4.5, Entity Framework (code-first), and MVC 5. I started out with the MVC template for responsive sites that includes Bootstrap. Everything went smoothly until I deployed the site to our QA server. This box runs Windows Server 2008 x64 (no, not R2). I naively published my app to a local folder and copied everything to the server folder that I created for the new website. After I updated the connection string in the web.config and started the site, I got the ominous HTTP Error 403.14 - Forbidden The Web server is configured to not list the contents of this directory. when I tried to hit the home page. Little did I know that it would take me the next 6 hours to figure out what was going on. Because I had to once again sift through so much misinformation on the web about this issue, I am going to write up what I found. IIS Configuration Common things to check when a website does not run properly are The app pool configuration pipeline mode target .Net framework (4.0.30319 is the latest, and 4.5.1 is installed) credentials Folder security (allow access for the app pool user) Website security (anonymous access is needed for my site) Re-register ASP.Net by running aspnet_regiis ad nauseam None of these things applied, though, because I had done a thorough job installing .Net 4.5.1 and configuring my site. Deployment Method Because IIS seemed to be set up and configured correctly for my website, I looked at the way I deployed. Maybe something was missing? I installed the Web Platform Installer on our server and added the Web Deploy plugin (3.5). This is required if you want to either use the one-click deployment from Visual Studio or use the Web Deployment Package script that Visual Studio generates. I removed my website from the server, recreated it from scratch, and tried both deployment methods in Visual Studio with the same results. From the error message it appears that MVC is not working properly. IIS is looking for a default page to load, does not find one in the root of an MVC site, and can’t show the folder content because folder browsing is disabled. But why? Clearly this has to do with the way requests are routed to the correct module in IIS, and somewhere this process is broken. There are dozens of questions on Stackoverflow related to this issue with answers all over the map, some trivial, some complex. I came back to the same recommendation, though, because nothing else seemed to apply: adding these lines to the web.config: <system.webServer> <modules runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true"></modules> </system.webServer> There are valid concerns about implementing such a drastic measure, though, for example by Rick Strahl or by this chap. I tried to add this manually to my web.config, but only got an error. My IIS did not understand the <system.webServer> section, even though I followed the documentation closely. None of the hot fixes that were referenced in these posts worked for me (for example this one or this one), presumably because I am on Server 2008 and not R2, and when I tried to install, I would only get the message that the hotfix does not apply to my server. And by the way, the server is current with patches, so any hotfixes would have been applied in the past anyway. Managed Modules The bin folder contained all the necessary assemblies for MVC (MVC 5 does not need to be deployed as a prerequisite because it is part of the web site deployment package). And yet, for some reason, MVC did not rewrite the URL to invoke the correct handlers for my site. So, after more poking around in various Stackoverflow articles and blog posts I had a break-through when I finally came across this one on MSDN. It explains how to use the IIS Manager’s GUI to explicitly add the UrlRoutingModule to the web.config, even though it showed up as installed for my site: UrlRoutingModule 4.0 After I unchecked the “Invoke only for requests to ASP.NET applications or managed handlers” checkbox the Entry Type changed to Local (see the screen shot above) and a corresponding section appeared in my web.config. IIS suddenly began to understand <system.webServer> section (I still don’t know why), and the site started to render MVC views. The section that was added, btw, is this one: <system .webServer> <modules> <remove name="UrlRoutingModule-4.0"></remove> <add name="UrlRoutingModule-4.0" type="System.Web.Routing.UrlRoutingModule" preCondition=""></add> </modules> </system> I had seen this before at this point, but only now it made sense to me. What still does not make sense to me is why this was necessary and why a. Visual Studio had not included this in the web.config b. The routing module was not invoked without this setting. Related Posts:OpenVPNThe Voip.ms SMS Integration for Home AssistantMy USPS Certified Mail Experience ExplainedAmazon threatens customer of 26 yearsEnphase Envoy Local Access Web .Net 4.5IIS 7ModulesMVC 4RoutingWindows Server 2008
Congratulations for you, I suffered much time because this problem and only now, after read your post, it was solved.
This is the most informative and useful post on how to get MVC working on IIS. Your problem was exactly my problem and you were the only one who had the answer. Thank you so much.
Thank you so much I had gone through all the same steps to debug the routing issue and your post saved me from despair.
Wow, just wow. I had trouble finding ‘modules’ 🙂 haha, but insisted on searching it, until i’ve found it, and it works, brilliant.
I am trying out a small MVC5 application on Windows 2008 R2 and having the same http error 403.14. I have carefully read your blog and unchecked the changes in urlrouting module entry . I have used the .NET4.5 to buld my application but trying to run it in the .NET 4.0 application pool. I have no idea where to start diagnosing this proble.
Thanks you very much I followed the instructions you mentioned and it worked for me. Saved me hours. I did a google search for “deploy asp.net mvc 5 to iis 7” and the answer (link to your site) was 7th in the google search Best Regards DairyMilk
After 10 hours we finally made a small change and, instead of 404 errors, the system started giving us 403.14’s, leading us right to your blog. Five minutes later we were up and running. Thanks so much!
Thanks you my friend, this article solve my problems. I was already working a week ago in my Web.config settings whitout sucess.
Thanks a lot. But I have some issue after run. MVC 5 with bundles css, js not working. I thinks if have condition, upgrade to windows server 2012.
If error on css, jquery. Fix asap use publish choose Debug. Because release will use bundles and iis 7.5 not understand
One question – you keep saying “in my web.config”. The web.config where? Of your specific web application? How would just doing something within the IIS mgr gui modify the web.config file of a particular web application? Can you clarify that please.
Warren, many site configuration changes are persisted in the web.config for the site. Certain things are persisted in other, system-wide configuration files (bindings, for example), but in this case they were not.