Error: “The file '/MasterPages/MainMaster.master' does not exist.” (Yes, this file does exist!)

Question

I just got a new desktop computer with Windows 7 Pro as the operating system. I installed Visual Studio 2008 on to this new computer and tried to open a previously existing ASP.

Answer 1

Two things to check:

1. When using "~" in a file path, make sure that the current application deployment believes the root directory is the same as it was before. (I've run into this sometimes moving an app from the VS Development Server and IIS.)

2. Make sure that the user account that the server is running under has permissions to access that directory. Since you just moved the code over from another computer and probably some intermediate storage devices, the security permissions may not be right.