Element Not Found error when creating a virtual directory

That about sums it up. I right click on a folder and choose "properties". Normally I can just click on "create" to make the folder a virtual directory, but for some reason it's giving me a "Element Not Found" dialog box error message.

After the error it behaves as if it hasn't created the VD, but if you refresh the listings it appears with the right icon, and seems to have been created (though it doesn't work). When you go into the properties, the name field is blank. You can enter a name and click on OK and then it works just fine.

Anyways, I can't seem to find anything on Google. Anyone have any suggestions?

try backing up the data then delete the folder completely. Reboot a couple times for luck, then try re-creating the virtual directory normally. Possibly there used to be a folder there and then it got deleted from the disk but is still remaining in the IIS metabase.

Nope, this is happening to brand new folders. It's a brand new OS install, actually. And I've tried the reboot-and-pray technique several times to no avail.

Hi Asmoran - I was wondering if you ever found a solution to this problem. We are experiencing the same on WIN2003. We have tried to reinstall metadata.xml- but it was no help. Like you said it happens on new and old folders.
Hope you can help - cheers Norma

It happens when you delete the DefaultAppPool. Recreate it and the error will go away.

-Ryan

Hey Thanks for that Ryan. It was linked to the DefaultAppPool- we ended up raising this with Microsoft:

We had entries in the metabase.xml file for the DefaultAppPool, which were not required as we had deleted our DefaultAppPool for "business" reasons. There are a couple of possible reasons why we ended up with this corruption/conflict with the IIS settings in the metabase.xml file:

1. I could have happened when we uninstall FrontPage Server Extensions(FPS). We had to uninstall FPS to fix another error we were getting. Microsoft advised that the uninstall can cause conflict/corruption in the metabase.xml file.
2. It also could have happened after a live restore of our web server. We noticed that our third party support company did not restore all files and folders, perhaps this is how the metabase.xml file got 'out of sync' with the App Pools.

In the end Microsoft applied the following steps to fix the problem:

1. Open a command prompt on this server.
2. Navigate to %systemdrive%\inetpub\adminscripts directory.
3. Execute the following commands,
cscript adsutil.vbs set W3SVC/AppPoolId ASP
cscript adsutil.vbs set W3SVC/1/AppPoolId ASP

This replaced the DefaultAppPool entries with the valid 'ASP' app pool and we are now able to create applications - Yay!

Cheers - Norma