A virtual directory must exist when compiling with Visual Studio

Problem

You receive this error when compiling your application with Visual Studio .NET in Iron Speed Designer:

Unable to compile application.  A virtual directory must exist when compiling with Visual Studio. Please create a virtual directory by hand for ‘http://localhost/XXX’ that points to the physical directory “C:\YYY”, then try building again.

This error can sometimes occur when you are not running ‘localhost’ as the web server, even though a virtual directory already exists for your application.

Solution

Place a dummy file called 'get_aspx_ver.aspx' in your application’s project folder.  The file can be empty.  (You can Google 'get_aspx_ver.aspx' to get an explanation of why this works).

See Also

Part IX:  Troubleshooting Applications

Application Generation and Compilation Error Messages