How can I know when my ASP.NET application can't start?

How do I detect if a .NET application is not working?

[DrGUID]

Hi,

I've built an ASP.NET application that is now live. However, because it contains live data developers can't actually log into it to see if it is working properly.

Although the application emails us if any errors arise when running (e.g. database unavailable), these are only sent *if* the application manages to start.

If the application can't start for some reason (e.g. there's a syntax error in the web.config file or the dlls get corrupted) then there is no way for the application itself to alert us.

I've learned to look in the IIS logs to see if there are 500 errors, but if anyone knows how to put some sort of monitoring facility to let us know the minute an ASP.NET application goes wrong then I'd be really interested (perhaps something can be done at the machine.config level?)

And no, changing the application to allow developers to log in to the live system is not possible (at least in the immediate future). :-(

[mrMister]

I wrote a monitoring app that calls a test page from a remote machine to perform a similar task.

[DrGUID]

Actually I've found out it is possible using the machine.config to run an assembly in the global assembly cache. Although a monitoring script would work, the GAC approach looks like we'd be able to see a complete readout of the errors without having to log into the app or anything.