I normally work on one box to do my ASP.NET 2.0 development using Visual Studio 2005.  In order to allow me to work off-site, I copied all of my project folders (using XCOPY) to my laptop hard drive.  Now, when I try to resume development with Visual Studio and try to build the site I get this error:

 

Error     101       It is an error to use a section registered as allowDefinition='MachineToApplication' beyond application level.  This error can be caused by a virtual directory not being configured as an application in IIS.            C:\nick\Projects\WebSites\gscanAsp2\gscanAsp2\web.config       49        

 

I have seen some posts that list this error as being caused by the site not being configured as an application, and doing so solves the problem.  However, in my case, the site is configured as an application but the problem persists.  It is noteworthy to mention that the source site is Windows 2003 server (IIS 6) while the laptop is Windows 2000 professional (IIS 5).  I have tried deleting the site in IIS 5 on the laptop and re-creating it but this error persists.  When I recreate the site in IIS 5, I just point it to the folder which I XCOPY’d.  Can anyone tell me what might be happening?

 

Nick

Site is set for the correct version of the framework?  Using a virtual directory or is the app at the site root?

Jeff

I checked the framework version.  It was initially incorrect, but I set it to 2.0.50727, which I think is the latest?  I reset IIS and I still have the same error.  Any other ideas?

Thanks,

Nick

 

Can't take credit for the idea, but this fixed my problem.

http://blogs.msdn.com/robgruen/archive/2005/09/12/464196.aspx

I converted from 2003 to 2005. I put the backup copy in a subfolder of my virtual directory. The file that was causing problems was the web.config file in my backup folder, not the current valid one.

I moved the backup to somewhere else and had no problems.