IIS 500.0 AuthenticateRequest error for static files

Question

I have tried to setup an website in a new server and I get this error for all static files html/css/js, etc.

HTTP Error 500.0 - Internal Server Error

The page cannot be displayed because an internal server error has occurred.

AuthenticateRequest is happening for StaticFile and fails somewhere. Our site uses windows based authentication, so we enabled only Windows based authentication as same as other server where it works fine.

1. Added IIS_IUSRS permissions to the website folder

2. Tried the explanation given https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/chaun/2014/09/02/error-500-0-internal-server-error-authenticaterequest-staticfile-0x80070542/

3. Verified with another working server installed features.

Still could not figure out after 2 days what is going wrong in our IIS site setup.

Answer 1

(sorry if this answer is not a perfect match, but it's the closest question I could find)

I had a similar issue here, but running IISExpress 10 started from VS2015. I tried everything listed in https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/chaun/2014/09/02/error-500-0-internal-server-error-authenticaterequest-staticfile-0x80070542/ with no luck, so the only way I could make it work in the development environment was running IISExpress as Administrator (which should not affect at all as my account is already an administrator and the correct impersonation configs were in in place):

C:\WINDOWS\system32>"C:\Program Files\IIS Express\iisexpress.exe" /config:"C:\Users\med\git\project\Solution\.vs\config\applicationhost.config" /site:App.Server

Answer 2

I had this issue using IIS Express launched from Visual Studio 2019 when debugging my website. The symptom was that scripts etc. were read correctly from the physical location by IIS Express, but some font files (.woff, .ttf) were refused with this error code.

Running Visual Studio as administrator worked around the issue, but this is not ideal as it may hide other issues. Modifying the permissions on the physical location to give <PC Name>\\IIS_IUSRS read\\execute permissions fixed the fault.