I'm trying to create a virtual directory in an asp.net 2 application....and I'm about ready to explode.

My company is hosting several web sites, and I want all of the sites to be able to share a directory of commonly used files, so that I won't have to include all those files with every web site.
This is important to me to save disk space and to make updates as simple as possible.

Each web site has its own application is the IIS (IIS 6.0 on Win2K3) with the following things enabled:
Anonymous acces
Integrated Windows authentication
Local impersonation

Everything's peachy until I create a new virtual directory directly below the application top level.
The virtual directory is automatically configured as an application and shows the contents of the to-be shared folder in IIS alright, but when I run my web site .NET gives me an
"Could not find a part of the path " - Error.

The source folder for the shared virtual directory has read/write acces for the "ASP.NET Machine Account" and "Internet Guest Account".

It seems I've tried everything so any hints/solutions will be greatly appreciated. :cry:

Alright I have figured out a solution! Open the iis mmc console and navigate to the folder that your virtual directory is in....also open windows explorer and navigate to the same directory. This gets weird but i assure you that is works!
first delete your virtual directory.
next create a shortcut (using windows explorer) to the http://address corresponding to the virtual directory.
next switch over to the mmc console and refresh...you'll notice that the .url suffix was added to your shortcut, remove it....i know what your saying but trust me. Now re-create your virtual directory. when you go to your site and click on the link it will append whatever the name of the link is to the end of the http address. I don't know why this works but it does. Make sure that you do the steps in the order i provided because if the virtual directory exists then you will get an error stating the name already exists when you try to delete the .url extension. Let me know if you have any issues interpreting my instructions. You can email me at [snipped]

I forgot to add when you create the shortcut name it with the same name of your virtual directory.

Hi, dbreise.
If u notice the post dates you'll find that this thread has been dead for more than 2 years now, and no longer has any relevance. But thank you, though ;-)