iis express: A blank web.config breaks my website

Question

I'm running iis express on windows 7. When I put a web.config file in my site it will not load- the browser keeping waiting for it to respond.

I even tried an "empty" web.config with the following in it:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration>
  <system.web>

  </system.web>
</configuration>

The browser still won't load the page. When I delete the web.config it works fine. Not sure how to troubleshoot this.

Answer 1

Well I just started getting permissions errors (Error Code 0x80070005). Not sure why as the IUSR had read\execute and my own user account (which is the context iis express is supposed to be running in) had full access. This is my own little development box so I just gave everyone permission to the websites entire folder structure- which seems to have worked.