Request for Sitecore page returns IIS 404

Question

I request a page in Sitecore and I get a 404 from IIS. The site works on my development environment & staging. This is on the production machine, which is a new install. I've never actually seen it work. The fact that it's giving me an IIS 404 (instead of a Sitecore 404) seems to indicate that whatever handler Sitecore uses isn't being recognized or isn't set up properly. I'd appreciate any suggestions about where to begin looking or what the issue might be.

We're in II7 running in classic mode.

Answer 1

I have the same issues if I run Sitecore in classic mode. Why don't you try running in Integrated mode, for all handlers to work propperly? Your Sitecore login page works, so that indicates that you have unzipped the Sitecore folder corretly. I'd suggest you to try Integrated mode.

Answer 2

It sounds like a permissions issue, check that Network Service (or Application Pool Identity) has the correct access to all of the Sitecore folders.

This looks like a fairly good guide on this:

Sitecore folder & IIS permissions

You could also try exporting the IIS setup for production and staging and comparing the two to make sure nothing odd with the setup.

Answer 3

Have you tried running the installer? If you are cleaning up someone else's install, there's no telling what they did... far easier to start again. You can easily connect to an existing database, or install a package with all your content once you've got a good working Sitecore instance.