IIS 7.5 – 403 Forbidden

Ok, I have scoured online resources and applied all the suggested solutions.

I am setting up a simple website on Windows Server 2008 R2 under IIS 7.5 using the “ASP.NET v4.0” pool. I am setting this up as an application under Default Web Site with a different root. I keep getting the 403 Forbidden error.

I have:

1. Installed asp.net using aspnet_regiis.exe -i (many times)
2. Made sure my root directory (physical path) has permissions for
   “IIS_IUSR” and “IUSR” users.
3. Made sure “Anonymous Authentication” is enabled and set to “Application Pool Identity”
4. I have restarted IIS numerous times
5. I have checked and double-checked every other configuration.

What’s strange is that I have another application under Default Web Site and it works just fine.

Any suggestions will help. This shouldn’t be so hard unless I am missing something obvious.

Answers:

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Method 1

Ok, I am quite embarrassed but the over sight was that “Require SSL” was checked by default and that is the place I did not check. I guess it is because an SSL is bound to the Default Web Site. Removing that check made it work.

Hopefully this will help someone else.

Method 2

Haha you think that is embarrasing! This is probably the 1000th webserver I’ve installed… 30mins of 403s!! I can’t figure it out. There is a stub default.asp in there.. permissions all correct… everything!

I turned on “directory” browsing in desparation of flicking around.

default.asp.txt is sitting there….. DOH.

Need to turn OFF “known file types”… why is that setting like that anyway?

Method 3

Another possible issue which leads to a 403 error:

The Global.asax file is missing.

Method 4

For me the answer was in handler mappings section of IIS 7.5

Adding the following to web.config enabled all the aspx pages to work correctly

<configuration>
...
  <system.webServer>
    <modules runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true" />
    <handlers accessPolicy="Read, Script" />
    ... 
  </system.webServer>
</configuration>

Method 5

Grant permission to the Network Service user in the NTFS folder

Also check the .Net authorization rules:

Method 6

Check that IP address restrictions are not blocking the request. Can check this in the logs.

(This was my embarrassing reason!)

Method 7

Mine was even more embarrassing.

Right Click on folder,Remove READ only attribute.

Method 8

For me, there was a vestigial Web.config in C:inetpubwwwroot with rewrite rules. Deleting it solved the problem.

Method 9

I was facing issue on windows 7 and surprisingly it was fixed after installing service pack 1

Method 10

You might also get this if setting up FTP for a website and you try and change the default directory for FTP on the website.

From what I can tell:

Manage FTP Site -> Advanced Settings -> Physical Path

is the same

Manage Website -> Advanced Settings -> Physical Path

Changing one will change the other and possibly cause a 403 on a working site.

All methods was sourced from stackoverflow.com or stackexchange.com, is licensed under cc by-sa 2.5, cc by-sa 3.0 and cc by-sa 4.0