I have the same problem ! who can help me! I am pool in English !

In order to investigate performance problems I downloaded the website from remote hosting.
ASP.NET2.0+MSSQL2005 in both remote and local site.

I could not compile it locally having
"Data at the root level is invalid. Line 1, position 1" error
until I deleted all _vti* files and folders (_vti_cnf\, _vti_pvt\, _vti_script\, etc.).

Internet search shows that it is created by FPE (FrontPage Extensions) http://www.issociate.de/board/post/463236/_vti_cnf_folders.html tells:
"ignore them, but do not remove them from your local site."

Hummm, I am confused - where are they created and for what?
And what about deleting them on server?

Go to C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\ find your WSS Web Application (represented by a port number), then delete an unknown folder created by sharepoint, namely vti_cnf from all the folders and sub-folders in your web application, the error disappears. It may come because we have tried to edit the WSS web application having Form based authentication, atleast in my case it got resolved by deleting this junk folder...

I found that if the first line of web.config does not have a space before the closing ?, I get the "data at the root level is invalid. Line 1, position 1." error. In your example you are also missing the extra space.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> (CAUSES ERROR)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> (WORKS LIKE A DREAM)

 regards

 Ian
 

Thanks Jbenisek for that post.

 I had the same problem, I only open my sharepoint web site with Sharepoint Designer 2007 without saving anything , and voila, everything exploded. It had nothing to do with any permissions with ASP or changes to any web.config files, I did a hard drive seach and all the date stamp on all the web.config were untouched. I must say that all theses stupid events are pushing us to the wrong side of the problem. I saw these folders created by SD 2007 when i compared with yesterday's set of backups, but I didn't care, they were only inoffensive folders... When i read your post, I removed all the scrap left by SD 2007 and everything went back to normal.

The only lesson i had in this is to only work with copies when working with SD 2007, and basics are often the best way to go.

 Again, thanks Jbenisek, and like you said, this guy who set up this should be shot !!!

 Hi, I had the same problem as the original poster, I made the mistake of opening the website with FrontPage, removed the front page extensions and it all worked. Thanks for the pointers

mehul.bhuva:

), then delete an unknown folder created by sharepoint, namely vti_cnf from all the folders and sub-folders in your web application, the error disappears.

thnks worked for me