IIS returning 403.1 error

Had a strange issue with IIS this afternoon at work that I thought I would share.

I am in the process of migrating an application from Apache to IIS and during the testing I discovered a strange error. When trying to return an HTML file IIS was returning a 403.1 status code and moaning about execute permissions.

I spent a while checking all manner of security permissions only to discover that it was because the file was in a folder whose name ended in '.com'. Apparently this causes issues because IIS thinks that you are trying to execute a file with a '.com' extension.

Sadly I had to recode my architecture to change the folder name as there did not seem to be a work around.

Anyway hope this helps someone someday who is scratching their head!

By Simon Baynes