web.sitemap not found but it exists

I have an ASP.net site and I created a web.sitemap file in the root directory. It contains:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<siteMap xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/AspNet/SiteMap-File-1.0" >
<siteMapNode>
    <siteMapNode url="~/Default.aspx" title="Home" description="Rado Home" />
    <siteMapNode url="" title="Structural" description="">
      <siteMapNode url="" title="Doors" description=""/>
      <siteMapNode url="" title="Staircases" description=""/>
      <siteMapNode url="" title="Post Boxes" description=""/>
    </siteMapNode>

    <siteMapNode url="" title="Functional">
      <siteMapNode url="" title="Tables" />
      <siteMapNode url="" title="Features" />
    </siteMapNode>
    <siteMapNode url="" title="Sculpture">
      <siteMapNode url="" title="Wall" />
      <siteMapNode url="" title="Free Standing" />
    </siteMapNode>
    <siteMapNode url="" title="Smithing">
      <siteMapNod开发者_开发问答e url="" title="Gold" />
      <siteMapNode url="" title="Silver" />
      <siteMapNode url="" title="Copper" />
    </siteMapNode>
    <siteMapNode url="~/About.aspx" title="About"/>
    <siteMapNode url="~/Contact.aspx" title="Contact"/>
  </siteMapNode>
 </siteMap>

I then created a menu in my master page as follows:

<asp:SiteMapDataSource ID="SiteMapDataSource1" Runat="server" />
            <asp:Menu ID="NavigationMenu" runat="server" CssClass="menu" EnableViewState="false" Orientation="Horizontal" DataSourceID="SiteMapDataSource1" />

When I run the site I get the following error: The file web.sitemap required by XmlSiteMapProvider does not exist.

Any ideas as to what could be wrong?

Does your web.config contain a sitemap section?

<siteMap>
  <providers>
    <add name="SiteMapDataSource1" description="Default SiteMap provider." type="System.Web.XmlSiteMapProvider" siteMapFile="/MyApplication/Web.sitemap" />
    <add name="AdminSiteMap" description="Default SiteMap provider." type="System.Web.XmlSiteMapProvider" siteMapFile="/MyApplication/Admin.sitemap"  />
  </providers>
</siteMap>

like this?

Did you call the sitemap you created web.sitemap?

If not, then you need to clear the providers in the sitemap tag & add a new provider that includes the name of your sitemap.

This shows the default entry in the root web.config that you need to clear

I fixed it. Apparently there weren't enough permissions on the web.sitemap file so whichever user the site was running as couldn't read the file. On that note, does anyone know how I can find out which user the site accesses files as?

this issue can also occur if you have created a website copying it from another website but you forgot to create the related application into IIS