ASP.NET Show Error Details

Question

I recently deployed my ASP.NET 3.5 application to my test server, a newly installed copy of Windows Server 2003 Standard on which is IIS 6.0 and .NET 3.5 SP1. When I view the application (even from a web browser on the server) I get:

Server Error in '/' Application.

Runtime Error

Description: An application error occurred on the server. The current custom error settings for this application prevent the details of the application error from being viewed remotely (for security reasons). It could, however, be viewed by browsers running on the local server machine.

Details: To enable the details of this specific error message to be viewable on remote machines, please create a tag within a "web.config" configuration file located in the root directory of the current web application. This tag should then have its "mode" attribute set to "Off".

I am, however, on the local server machine, so I'm not sure why I'm seeing this error. I've added <customErrors mode="Off"/> to my Web.Config file, but I still can't get see the error details. Does anyone know how to fix this?

Answer 1

Check your web configuration. I suspect that you have an error in the configuration that is preventing it from being parsed correctly -- this may show up in the Event Log.

Answer 2

Check the Application event log. By default, ASP .NET should dump uncaught errors in there.

Also, have you deployed the application into a subdirectory, but haven't set up the subdirectory as an application? ASP .NET may be looking at the root web.config rather than the one in your subdirectory if it's not an application.

Answer 3

I've had a lot of good experiences with Elmah (http://code.google.com/p/elmah/). It does detailed behind the scenes error logging (email and/or database).

Answer 4

It turned out that it was a matter of different .NET versions running on the same Application Pool. Another disabled website on the same server was set to use .NET 1.1 for its application. Apparently that was the problem as changing it to .NET 2.0 resolved the issue.