An annoying problem - A site that works locally in VS2005 - doesn't work when copied to the web & IIS 6

Question

Hi,

This is really frustrating. I have a working site when run through VS2005. All previous versions of the site worked.

So I publish the site with "Allow this precompiled site to be updatable" unticked.

I remove the old site versions files and Copy the new version of the site upto the server. Lots of stuff works , new pages work, however some old unchanged pages no longer work and the error message is:

The file '/App_Forms/Reporting.aspx' has not been pre-compiled, and cannot be requested.

Now I see the stub file and the file in the bin dir, this is an old file that used to work fine and has had no changes, also it works when compiled up in vs2005.

Based on some other posts out there I already reinstalled ASP.net 2.0, no luck.

So I'm scratching my head and totally frustrated any one got any ideas?

Thanks

Answer 1

Tikola,

For issues regarding ASP.NET and website deployment you should post in the ASP.NET forums at http://forums.asp.net/. Someone there will be able to assist you.

Neil

Answer 2

Hi Tikola,

A precompiled web cannot dynamically compile other pages in the site. The precompiled image itself is assumed to be the whole site.

Also, what you are trying to do is better achieved by using Web Application Projects:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/asp.net/reference/infrastructure/wap/default.aspx

This allows you to compile in a way that is similar to Visual Studio 2003 - Visual Studio only compiles the code behind models - but the pages are compiled on the fly during first access.

Hope this helps.

Faisal Mohamood | Program Manager | Visual Studio - MSBuild

Answer 3

I had this annoying bug and my problem was that I was using an assembly that was not installed on the production server (Microsoft.ReportingViewer.WebForms.dll)  The solution was simple, add the assembly as a dependency in the setup project and set the target to the bin folder.

Answer 4

How did you reach that conclusion?

I have seen this error in many posts and every time is a different dll (of course, since every project references the dlls that it needs).

But how did you do it? Did you check all your references one by one or there was some error in the Event log or somewhere that pinpointed that missing assembly??

 

Thanks,
David

Answer 5

Yes, the reference issue is what got me.  The rule it seems to me is that every reference in the web.config must be "found" by ASP.NET or you will get this error.  For me it was the MySql dll.

Hope this helps.