My ASP.net application, hosted on a shared Win2003 server, uses url rewriting in the application_BeginRequest to have human-friendly urls in the public and dynamic addresses internally. Requests for aspx pages that really don't exist are being handled with a 404.aspx page as directed by settings in the web.config, while requests for other types of files that don't exist are being handled with a notfound.aspx page as directed in the application server settings for the application.

However, suddenly, all requests for aspx pages cause IIS to first check whether the file actually exists, just as if I would have set up IIS to check for the existence. (I know this for a fact because I am getting the 404 error as created by the notfound.aspx that I mapped for this error in IIS.) No requests for .aspx pages come through to my application unless IIS finds the file.

I have found this article and instructed my host to check: http://www.iisfaq.com/Default.aspx?tabid=3158 "Go to our site in the IIS management console, right click on it, select the home directory tab, click on "configuration" (a button on the lower right side), select the entry for .aspx, click edit, and make sure the checkbox "check that file exists" is NOT checked."

They did it, and say that the box was not checked and that they left it unchecked. It's windows, so maybe checking the "check that file exists" box, okaying it, and unchecking it again will help (reboot!)? Well, they had tried this twice already without avail.

So, what else could it be and how can I get IIS to let my application receive all requests for .aspx pages, whether they exist or not?

Thank you for any help!