I am attempting to create a C# web application with Visual Studio.NET and Windows 2003 Server [ RC2 ]. Every time I attempt to create a new project I recieve an error message indicating that the URL http://<hostname>/project does not map to the location C:\<projectpath>. I have attempted to use SMB/CIFS/NetBIOS ( whatever they're calling it) and FrontPage Extensions ( not that I actually *use* those, I actually turned them on because SMB would not work).
  Now, I have actually created a test file in c:\<projectpath> and verified that they *do* map to the same location. I have tried pre-creating the directory (which has been un-necessary in 2k/XP) as both real and virtual directories, but to no avail.
  Has anybody else been successful in getting IIS 6.0 and Visual Studio to interoperate?

Regards,
Meredith Shaebanyan

i just solved the same problem on our 2003 Server. We are using the ASPNET account as Worker process ID, meaning that we are using application pooling and using the ASPNET account as identity for VS.net applicaitons. I did the following to solve the problem.

- Removed Visual Studio .net server components from the server.
- Removed ASP.NET from the server (windows component).
- Removed Frontpage extensions (windows component).

Reinstalled all three again. Changed the password on the local ASPNET account (just to make sure that it was correct). Checked that my machine.config file had the same password mentioned in the (ProcessModel) section.

After that I restarted the IIS 6.0 and it was working. I don't know if you have to do all things mentioned above.