Force HTTPS using 301 Redirect on IIS7 gets 401.1 Error

Question

I've got a site that is using an Execute URL in the 403.4 error page slot that calls a page named forcessl.aspx. Here's the contents of the file:

strWork = Replace(strQUERY_STRING, "http", "https") strWork = Replace(strWork, "403;", "") strWork = Replace(strWork, "80", "") strSecureURL = strWork Response.Write(strSecureURL) Response.Redirect(strSecureURL) Catch ex As Exception End Try End If %>

This particular site gets a 401.1 error if https:// is not added to the URL. I have several other sites using the same method that work fine and this one mirrors those in all ways that I can tell (folder permissions, etc). This new site is just a subdomain of the same domain that the other sites are using. The main domain has a wildcard SSL cert.

From Microsoft's documentation, here is the meaning of the errors:

403.4

HTTP Error 403.4 - Forbidden: SSL Is Required To View This Resource

401.1

HTTP Error 401.1 - Unauthorized: Access is denied due to invalid credentials

Answer 1

I finally found the solution to this problem.

When setting up the site I had done everything but put the site in the bindings for the domain. I hadn't added the subdomain.mysite.com to the bindings for port 80.

I had forgotten this because since I was forcing everything through port 443 with a rewrite, I didn't think I needed to add it. In digging around for the solution I saw that all the other subdomains were in the bindings and this one wasn't.

A simple little thing caused 6 months of frustration. What was weird is that it worked for some people, but not for others if you tried to access it through HTTPS.

Always learning.