Well, I finally solved the mystery of what was causing wildcard mapping of aspnet_isapi in IIS 6 to fail so horribly.
It appears that checking that simple little box just breaks the ever living crap out of the wildcard mapping. But, you say, I know aspnet_isapi.dll is there, so what does having this fine checkbox checked hurt? From TechNet:
Select Verify that file exists to instruct the Web server to verify the existence of the requested script file and to ensure that the requesting user has access permission for that script file. If the script does not exist or the user does not have permission, the appropriate warning message is returned to the browser and the script engine is not invoked.
Yes, that checkbox instructs IIS to check the existance of the requested item prior to handing things off to ASP.NET. Bugger.
This is one of those situations where skipping a line in a multipage instruction manual is a BAD thing. Here’s a hint: When you’re writing instructions and are trying to get across a very simple, yet extremely important step in the process,
MAKE SURE YOU PUT SOME EMPHASIS ON IT.
It doesn’t hurt you, and it may save some poor slob a couple weeks worth of cursing.
So, it may be that Frontpage 2002 Server Extensions doesn’t break URL rewriting after all. I’m going to back up my server tomorrow and try some experimentation on it. I’ll post the results here later on.