C# – The file ‘blahblah.aspx’ has not been pre-compiled, and cannot be requested

asmxasp.netcvisual studio 2012

Yes I know, this question has been asked loads of times already.

But this isn't quite the same. Actually I think the error message is accurate!

Normally when you view a published ASPX file, you just see "This is a marker file generated by the precompilation tool, and should not be deleted!".

In my case, after building and publishing, when I view the published pages I see the full source code.

I'm using a newly installed copy of VS2012 so there's obviously something not quite right.

Any suggestions?

Thanks 🙂

Best Answer

I have been struggling to fix this issue for past few days. At least in my case, the error message was completely misleading and had nothing to do with precompiled website. There are many articles or posts out there that give many different answers which only add to confusion. I personally believe this error is caused mainly due to missing references or incorrect versioning. In order to fix the issue as fast as possible you have to rule this out, or otherwise fix the missing/wrong reference.

To do so you need to use a tool named "Assembly Binding Log Viewer". This tool will tell you which references are missing or have wrong versions. If there is a missing/mismatched reference then go ahead and fix it; otherwise you need to do the other magic tricks like checking for App Pool being 32-bit or permissions.

Steps:

  1. At your server create the following folders

    C:\fuslog C:\fuslog\logs

  2. Copy Assembly Binding Log Viewer to your server at C:\fuslog:

    You can find the program at a location like this

    C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0A\Bin\fuslogvw.exe

    You might need to look at "Program Files" instead of "Program Files (x86)" or look into different vesions instead of "v7.0A" (some newer versions might not work on older Windows versions)

  3. Execute fuslogvw.exe at server (you might need to right click and run as administrator)

  4. Click on "Setting..."

  5. Ensure "Log bind failures to disk" is checked

  6. Check the Enable custom log path and enter the following in the box: C:\fuslog\logs

  7. Click on OK

  8. Recycle/reset your app pool to enforce a fresh binding

  9. Click on Refresh. Now you can see the failed binding in here

  10. The better way to find the exact binding is to go to c:\fuslog\logs\Default. In here you can find the exact binding failures. Some are irrelevant and you need to find the critical one by trial and error. Mine was the following failure:

     System.Web.Mvc, Version=4.0.0.1, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35

I fixed the issue by adding the following entry at my web sites web.config:

<configuration>
    ...
    <runtime>
        ...
        <!-- Added this entry to fix the issue -->
        <dependentAssembly>
            <assemblyIdentity name="System.Web.Mvc" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" />
            <bindingRedirect oldVersion="0.0.0.0-4.0.0.1" newVersion="4.0.0.0" />
        </dependentAssembly>
        ...
    </runtime>
    ...
</configuration>

I hope this helps others to quickly fix the issue.

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