asp Default document not working on IIS7

Question

I have a classic asp application inside a .NET 4.0 application. I have set the default document to login.asp, but it does not automatically redirect to it. The entire application functions fine though and even displays the login.asp correctly if I browse to it.

The default document section in web.config is as below:

<defaultDocument>
    <files>
        <clear />
        <add value="login.asp" />
        <add value="index.html" />
        <add value="default.aspx" />
        <add value="Default.htm" />
        <add value="Default.asp" />
        <add value="index.htm" />
        <add value="iisstart.htm" />
    </files>
</defaultDocument>

I have looked at other similar questions on this site but were not of much help.

score 13 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 04 '11 at 06:47

13

I finally found the issue was because the asp application was assigned to an app pool in classic mode using .NET Framework 4.0.

Once I changed the app pool to use .NET Framework 2.0 (with managed pipeline in classic mode), the default document started to work too!

answered Oct 04 '11 at 06:47

Shirlz

837
2
11
18

1

Are you sure the new app pool is in Classic mode? I forgot that `system.webServer` section only works in Integrated mode. – Artem Koshelev Oct 04 '11 at 09:28
Yes, I had to make it classic mode to get the asp application to work. – Shirlz Oct 04 '11 at 22:54
You saved my week! Nothing about the site was changed, but a Windows update must have made something as the site would start with my custom `DefaultPage`. I didn't change the pipeline mode, but setting the .NET version to 2.0.x made the site load again. – Gustav Oct 03 '15 at 16:01

score 5 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 04 '11 at 05:07

5

Make sure you have Read/Write Feature Delegation enabled for Default Document:
DefaultDocument does not redirect to the file (i.e. URL is not changed). It acts similar to Server.Transfer function — executes the file when root URL (http://sitename/) is requested. Probably, your login.asp executed but it has instructions to redirect logged-in users to a different page, or display the different content to them.
Make sure the response is not cached. Clear cache and cookies and try again.

answered Oct 04 '11 at 05:07

Artem Koshelev

10,548
4
36
68

Thank you for your very clear instructions. I finally found the issue was because the asp application was assigned to an app pool in classic mode using .net framework 4.0. Once I changed this to use .net 2.0, the default document started to work too! – Shirlz Oct 04 '11 at 06:45

score 4 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 14 '16 at 21:48

I had this problem today with a brand new asp.net site deployed to Azure. I tried messing with IIS and my web.config included

<defaultDocument enabled="true">
    <files>
        <clear />
        <add value="Index.html" />
    </files>
</defaultDocument>

Turns out my problem was that the File > New Project wizard uses .NET 4.5.2 by default, and that isn't fully supported yet in Azure. I recompiled using .NET 4.5 as the target and everything works now!

asp Default document not working on IIS7

3 Answers3