Enable event logging of unhandled exceptions in ASP.NET

Question

I am getting this error:

Server Application Unavailable The web application you are attempting to access on this web server is currently unavailable. Please hit the "Refresh" button in your web browser to retry your request.

Administrator Note: An error message detailing the cause of this specific request failure can be found in the application event log of the web server. Please review this log entry to discover what caused this error to occur.

However there is no error in the application event logs. So I am wondering if there's a specific setting in IIS or for the virtual site that enables logging?

Changing the customerror setting in the web.config seems to have no effect. I don't think it's even getting that far.

IIS 6, Windows Server 2003

Answer 1

I believe, but could be wrong, that this is stored in the IIS Log. You can find the path to your IIS log by opening up the IIS management interface, going to the Properties of yoru website/webroot, going to the Web Site tab, and then at the bottom click the Properties button next to the Active log format drop down list. In the bottom of the Extended Logging Properties window will be a Log File Directory path along with the name of the folder and naming convention used for the log files.

Mine is located at C:\WINDOWS\System32\LogFiles\ in the W3SVC1 folder, but thats on XP so it might be different on a windows server.

Answer 2

Try navigating to the site in IIS, right-click the default page, and choose browse. If the page opens, you might be accessing it via the wrong url/port. If it doesn't, then you should start looking at the logs.