IIS5 not serving index.html on local machine even though it's listed in the Default Documents

Question

I'm developing a site in VS2008 on a machine running XP SP3 with IIS5. I've named the main page in each directory index.html to avoid the www.domain.tld/directory/pagename.ext scenario of specifying a full path, and also because these pages literally contain an index of the other pages in their directory.

When I debug on my local machine I get the dreaded "Directory Listing" page instead. I have confirmed that index.html is listed in the IIS Default Documents, and I've also tried moving it into the first position. No change. Uploading the site to a server running IIS7 produces the expected and desired results.

Is the problem because I have an older version of IIS? Is there a difference in how IIS operates when running locally instead of on a web server? Do I need to change a setting in web.config? Any thoughts will be appreciated.

Answer 1

Did you make sure Enable Default Document is checked? IIS 5 ignores any webserver settings in your web.config so that shouldn't have anything to do with it.