Iis 8 basic authentication enabled but only accepting windows credentails

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authentication

Basic

IIS8

Hello.

I have a site configured for Basic Authentication in IIS8 but when I try to hit it and am prompted for credentials, the credentials I pass are not accepted (these are the credentials of a local account on the server that has been given Full Control to the site). I am definitely entering the credentials correctly.

The only way I can authenticate is by entering my network credentials which is odd because Windows Auth is not even enabled for this site (nor it's parent).

I've also tried hitting the site via Postman and I can see via Wireshark that the Authentication header is being sent but again, I get a 401 each time.

Even more odd, this site is also on a second server (with which this one is load balanced). On that server, all works fine and I copied the website directory and all its contents exactly as is from that server.

As far as I can tell, the sites are identical.

Any suggestions?? Not sure where to look.

What I have tried:

I've used Wireshark to look at the request header and the Authentication header is being sent with the credentials. I've tried from Postman, Firefox, and Chrome and all receive a 401 from the server.

I've even tried access the site from the server itself (while logged on remotely) and the same thing happens.

UPDATE:
I found that when I remove (or rename) the web.config file the problem is eliminated, i.e., I can access the index.html page.

So, I tried weeding down the contents of the web.config to see if it was a particular section that was causing the problem but I eliminated everything but the bare minimum and still no luck:

<configuration>
   <system.webServer>

   </system.webServer>
</configuration>