ASP + Ms Access: An error occurred on the server when processing the URL. Please contact the system administrator. If you are the system administrator please click here to find out more about this error.

Problem
An error occurred on the server when processing the URL. Please contact the system administrator.  If you are the system administrator please click here to find out more about this error.

Solution:
Classic ASP: Security is Painful

I had to write some good old classic ASP code today and my classic ASP coding skills are so rusty that I put tons of errors in the code. I'm used to having basic ASP error messages on IIS5 and 6 which usually help me to track down problems. On IIS7 I only got the following though:

An error occurred on the server when processing the URL. Please contact the system administrator

After investigating a bit I figured out that we changed the default for the "scriptErrorSentToBrowser" flag in IIS7. It's now false and you always get the error above. Here is how to change it:

1) Start an elevated command prompt. Right-click the command shell item in the Start-Accessories menu and select "Run as Administrator".

2) Run the following command: %windir%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd set config -section:asp -scriptErrorSentToBrowser:true

Once you are done with debugging your ASP app please set it back to false. There are lots of 'evildoers' out there! :)