I have been trying for a few weeks to setup a DNN 7.4 development environment on my Windows 8.1 system and am having a very strange failure.  I posted the original err in the development forum and Christian provided some pointers but nothing seems to be moving my system anywhere closer to working. 

I have created a DNNdev.me web site in IIS with the proper bindings for DNNdev.me and www.DNNdev.me.  The folder permissions are set correctly to allow the IIS APPPPOOL\DNNdev.me account to have full control.  I can even use Visual Studio to create a new DesktopModule. 

The problem comes when I restart the operating system.  Attempts to access the DNNDev.me site fail with a 7 errors in the Exceptions table.  There are a pair of errors repeated 3 times and then the final message is a duplicate the of Menus.ascx not existing: 

Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
The file '/DesktopModules/DDRMenu/Menu.ascx' does not exist.

 The file does exist.  The protections on the file and the directory tree above it allow access and using the old system manager ‘hold the circuit breaker in’ of setting all users full control has no effect. 

Can anyone give some guidance about what could be causing my system to fail to work after a system restart? 

Thanks!

The last link was exactly on target. It was good old Visual Studio that created a virtual directory under the desktopmodules directory. I sent that off to virtual directory heaven and the site now loads. Now, all I need to do is to relearn how to do the module development - it's been a few years since I did any of that.

Thanks very much for pointing me in the right direction, cathal!!