Deploying website: 500 - Internal server error

Question

I am trying to deploy an ASP.NET application. I have deployed the site to IIS, but when visiting it with the browser, it shows me this:

Server Error

Answer 1

IIS also reports status code 500 without any event log hints if there are insufficient permissions on the physical home directory (i.e. IIS_IUSRS has no access).

Answer 2

Sometimes, the reason might be one of your .dll assemblies is not registered correctly on the server.

For example, you can successfully run a C# Excel web application on your local machine with Office installed, while getting the 500 error on server deployment, because there is no Office suite installed on the server, and thus you get the server error.

Answer 3

Probably your web.config file is wrong or is missing some tag. I solved my problem using the correct config tags for .NET 4.

<system.web>
    <compilation debug="true" strict="false" explicit="true" targetFramework="4.0">
        <assemblies>
            <add assembly="System.Deployment, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=B03F5F7F11D50A3A"/>
            <add assembly="System.Windows.Forms, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=B77A5C561934E089"/>
            <add assembly="System.Configuration, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=B03F5F7F11D50A3A"/>
            <add assembly="System.Data, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=B77A5C561934E089"/>
            <add assembly="System, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=B77A5C561934E089"/>
            <add assembly="System.Drawing, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=B03F5F7F11D50A3A"/>
            <add assembly="System.Web.Services, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=B03F5F7F11D50A3A"/>
            <add assembly="System.Xml, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=B77A5C561934E089"/>
            <add assembly="System.Transactions, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=B77A5C561934E089"/>
        </assemblies>
    </compilation>
    <pages controlRenderingCompatibilityVersion="3.5" clientIDMode="AutoID">
        <namespaces>
            <clear/>
            <add namespace="System"/>
            <add namespace="System.Collections"/>
            <add namespace="System.Collections.Specialized"/>
            <add namespace="System.Configuration"/>
            <add namespace="System.Text"/>
            <add namespace="System.Text.RegularExpressions"/>
            <add namespace="System.Web"/>
            <add namespace="System.Web.Caching"/>
            <add namespace="System.Web.SessionState"/>
            <add namespace="System.Web.Security"/>
            <add namespace="System.Web.Profile"/>
            <add namespace="System.Web.UI"/>
            <add namespace="System.Web.UI.WebControls"/>
            <add namespace="System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts"/>
            <add namespace="System.Web.UI.HtmlControls"/>
        </namespaces>
    </pages>
    <authentication mode="None"/>
</system.web>

Answer 4

I was pulling my hair out over this issue. Making sure the following entry was in the root web.config file fixed it for me:

<configuration>
  <system.webServer>
    <validation validateIntegratedModeConfiguration="false" />
  </system.webServer>
</configuration>

Remember that you have to add this to the existing XML elements, if they're already there. You can't just add at the end of the file, because you can't have multiple copies of any element.

Answer 5

I realized the permissions for the files and folders in your server also matter. I uploaded my files from a linux operating system and usually the permissions are limited for read and write. So when uploaded, the permission are still same as in the local machine.

I had the same error and i just changed the permissions for the folder i had uploaded and the error was gone.

Hope it helps someone.

Answer 6

500 internal server error can arise due to several reasons. First reason might be that web.config file is not properly created, means you have missed some tag in the web.config file. Secondly this error can be due to some code problem. To check which component of the web application is causing this error you can check Application setting in web.config file. The detail of solving and tracing 500 internal server error with diagram is given here: