Deny access to ‘admin’ folder in web.config

I am new to ASP.NET, so forgive me if this is simple.

I am trying to deny access to my ‘Admin’ folder via web.config. I looked at another answer to a similar question and they recommend using the <location> folder, however when I insert “Admin/” into the path I get the following error:

path attribute must be a
relative virtual path. It cannot
start with any of ‘ ‘ ‘.’ ‘/’ or
‘’. C:PersonalProjectsOliverSalonweb.config

I have tried placing “Admin”, “/Admin” & “Admin/”

<configuration>

<connectionStrings>
    <add name="OliverSalonConnectionString1" connectionString="Data Source=localhost;Initial Catalog=OliverSalon;Integrated Security=True" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />
</connectionStrings>
<system.web>
    <compilation debug="false" targetFramework="4.0" />
    <authentication mode="Forms">
        <forms name="Oliver" loginUrl="Login.aspx" path="/" timeout="20">
            <credentials passwordFormat="Clear">
                <user name="OliverSalon" password="cuts"/>
            </credentials>
        </forms>
    </authentication>
    <authorization >
        <deny users="?"/>
    </authorization>
</system.web>
<location path="/Admin">
    <system.webServer>
        <directoryBrowse enabled="false"/>
    </system.webServer>
</location>

Answers:

Thank you for visiting the Q&A section on Magenaut. Please note that all the answers may not help you solve the issue immediately. So please treat them as advisements. If you found the post helpful (or not), leave a comment & I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

Method 1

This is way back from my web form days.

Place a web.config in your admin folder.

The contents should be:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
    <system.web>
        <authorization>
          <allow roles="admin" />
          <deny users ="*" />
        </authorization>
    </system.web>
</configuration>

** EDIT to answer your question
If you set the login url the framework will automatically send you to the login page if an unauthorized user tries to access your admin folder.

        <authentication mode="Forms">
            <forms loginUrl="Login.aspx" timeout="20" slidingExpiration="true" cookieless="AutoDetect" protection="All" requireSSL="false" enableCrossAppRedirects="false" defaultUrl="Default.aspx" path="/"/>
</authentication>

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