VS ASP.NET 500 Server Error

Question

Hey guys, I'm having a super weird problem with my VS 2008 solution. We had this hand-coded ASP.NET compiled web app on our old IIS6/Win2003 server, working great, moved it to our new IIS7/Win2008 server, still working great, but when I try to compile the application and publish it again to our new Win2008 server, I get server 500 errors. It's ASP.NET 2.0 with AJAX extensions and AJAX control toolkit.

I'm not too great with server issues, or even sure if it is a server issue but here are some more symptoms... ?

• I know the website works (it only differs by some minor code fixes) and can use it's code on a development machine, there are no errors, and it publishes fine. Publishing (using the DLL files), and even not publishing and trying to use the code-behind files on our new server, both no success. The old website does work on the new server just fine.

• If I put a simple hello world html page in the website's virtual directory, with the old code, it works fine, but with the new code, that html page gets the 500 error. And in fact, oddly, I can add all the files to the website, only when I add the web.config, do I get the 500 error. The web.config has not changed.

• Tried stopping and restarting IIS

What's the problem, here? Any ideas, what else can I do to troubleshoot the problem?

Answer 1

Check what IIS7 is running under .NET 2.0 or .NET 3.5?

Answer 2

Its tough to see without being there, have you checked which App pool the server is running the site on? (default should be OK, I have found some to be set to classic which causes problems with the AJAX control toolkit)

Also you could try aspnet_regiis -i (if the server is 64 bit make sure you run the one under the 64 bit version of .net)

Answer 3

It was a IIS 7 to 8 issue.

Both machines have different assemblies that need to be just-so on the web.config, in addition with IIS7 web.config changes to make AJAX happy (it has new XML sections).