I know that it's standard practice when you start a new site in visual studio to compile as you go along, which I've done before several times quite happily.  However, I've run into a very practical issue that I don't understand how to fix.

 

I've been left with what I think is a compiled a local copy of a web app built by a previous developer.  I assume this because if I try to open it directly in VS, then I get the warning:

"you are attempting to open a precompiled website. You can view the site but changes might cause the web site to stop functioning.  To modify a site it is recommended that you edit the files in the original website, precompile the site, and then publish it again."  - OK, but how do I do that since I have no access to the original website (see below)? 

 

Anyways, the developer was using his laptop to develop and deploy the site and is now gone, so I have no access to the uncompiled version of the site.  All I am left with is a working version of the site that lives in my local C:/Inetpub directory.  I can see all of  the aspx and the corresponding "code behind" aspx.vb files, but how do I make the site editable once again so I can continue to develop it?

 

It seems that VS stores all the compiled dlls in a directory called "bin"   - Do I keep or delete these?, Or do I need to go into the @page directive of each file and swap "inherits=" for "src=" or "codefile=", or something like that?