IIS EXPRESS - TURNING ON WINDOWS AUTHENTICATION
Posted In: iis
Time to Read: 1 min
So I brought up a new machine and tried to run my ASP.NET web site in IIS Express that uses Windows Authentication and was greeted with the following error:
Error
The requested page cannot be accessed because the related configuration data for the page is invalid.
Details:
This configuration section cannot be used at this path. This happens when the section is locked at a parent level. Locking is either by default (overrideModeDefault=”Deny”), or set explicitly by a location tag with overrideMode=”Deny” or the legacy allowOverride=”false”.
Solution
Every time I bring up a new machine I always forget to update the IIS Express setting to fix this error and have to do a google search to figure out where the IIS Express configuration is stored. So I figured I should finally document the fix for it.
The error is caused by this section in the web.config
<system.webServer>
<security>
<authentication>
<windowsAuthentication enabled="true" />
<anonymousAuthentication enabled="false" />
</authentication>
</security>
</system.webServer>
To fix this open up the IIS Express applicationhost.config. This file is stored at C:\Users[your user name]\Documents\IISExpress\config\applicationhost.config
Update for VS2015+: config file location is $(solutionDir).vs\config\applicationhost.config
Look for the following lines
<section name="windowsAuthentication" overrideModeDefault="Deny" />
<section name="anonymousAuthentication" overrideModeDefault="Deny" />
<add name="WindowsAuthenticationModule" lockItem="true" />
<add name="AnonymousAuthenticationModule" lockItem="true" />
Change those lines to
<section name="windowsAuthentication" overrideModeDefault="Allow" />
<section name="anonymousAuthentication" overrideModeDefault="Allow" />
<add name="WindowsAuthenticationModule" lockItem="false" />
<add name="AnonymousAuthenticationModule" lockItem="false" />
Save the file and refresh your asp.net web page. It may take a moment to load as it load the new configurations into IIS Express.
Thanks to :
http://digitaldrummerj.me/iis-express-windows-authentication/